One of life’s joys in spring time is after plants have been sleeping for the winter, they awaken and flowers brighten up the landscape. Different flowers come throughout the year and wait till the winter’s frost to go back to sleep. As the snow has shown itself in the northeast and around the country, it is good to read a book about flowers. An interesting book to read is The Reason For Flowers – their history, culture, biology and how they change our lives by Stephen Buchmann published by Scribner, NY, 2015.

While we enjoy the colors and varieties, the number one reason for flowers to have color is to attract attention from pollinators so they can have sex. Inside the colorful petals of the flower will be a pistil with an ovary at the bottom and stigma at the top. The plant is looking for pollen from another to reach the stigma to generate more plants. The reason for outside pollinators to visit a plant is they receive a reward. The reward is usually food in the form of nectar, pollen, floral oils. The animals such as bees love nectar and have parts of their body to pick it up, collect pollen and drop off pollen in the plants which makes it a win-win for all.

The author studies bees for a living and makes the book exciting to read. Bees are the world-champion pollinators because of their ancient specialization upon flowers, their ability to learn and manipulate complex floral signals, shapes, colors, and odors. Sometimes they fly for miles, the plants deposit pollen onto the plant when they come including in places the bee can not reach or forget to look for it. This pollen is the stuff that goes plant to plant and helps to form new plants. The bees ability means for commercial agriculture – their hives are near by for nearly 2/3s or about $ 10 billion of agriculture is dependent on the bee.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the more complex the world looks, the harder it is to find the simple facts. In the world of agriculture which looks to weather as the prime factor, we really should be asking is their enough bees? if there is, then weather can be the next discussion. The plants and flowers grow to attract the bees to grow the plants.  Continually try to find the simple in the complex allows it to make decisions easier. In investing the simple is profitable companies which can pay a dividend will be good investments.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.