Waking to the morning sun, her petals thoroughly sprinkled with pollen, Bee Balm radiates satisfaction like she has spent a night with a mythic lover. Opening her blossoms to the day with their spicy, heady aroma, the bees and butterflies have their way with her, diving deep into her tubular nectar-rich flowers, and dancing all over the face of her womb. She revels in this erotic mating dance with partners who bring her the pollen she so deeply desires.

Far from being taken advantage of, this is what she longs for. Her lovers spread her pollen to the wider world while bringing her new pollen that she yearns for. She is a choosy maiden and mother, and any pollen that is not the perfect match does not make it past the mouth of her womb. She, like all flowers, chooses what pollen to accept and rejects any that are not a love match, not the right genetic mate, or when she is not able to provide the right resources to produce viable seed. She can recognize her own pollen and reject it as well.

In the plant world the female parts of the flower control when their egg cells are fertilized and by whom. Many animals will also be unable to bring forth young when resources are scarce. Rabbits, in particular, are known to reabsorb their fetuses when there are nutritional deficiencies or disease. It might be interesting to know, if we could, what natural biological controls hunter-gatherer women 25,000 years ago or more, had over their reproduction. When food or love was scarce, were they unable to conceive? What say did their bodies have in the reproductive act before they learned to use the help of plants to make their choices?

What role does Love play in reproduction in nature? Is it a necessary component? If Love in this context is Eros, that driving Life force wrapped around the erotic mystery of our longing for our beloved and for Life itself, is it what drives all of creation? What happens when this Life force energy of Eros is left out of the equation in creating a seed? Can the seed be as strong and viable as it should be? What happens when we bioengineer seeds in a lab? Are they viable in the long term of thousands or millions of generations? Can they serve the long story of their species? What does this mean in a human life?

Scientists are just barely beginning to understand the intricacies of how, over millions of years of evolution, the flowers have developed the ability to recognize one pollen grain from another and who to let in and who not to let in. It seems simple in principle, but evidently the genetic details are quite staggering. What about this process, especially on the energetic level of Love and Eros, are we not yet able to grasp the importance of in our science labs?

Flowers have been evolving for over 125 million years. Their ability to know what they want, to generate their deep longing, their Eros, into the visible Love we call Beauty, is a model that could be life-changing for us all, if we as a species could begin to revere their deep wisdom. What is the deep desire of our hearts? What could happen if we saw the entirety of our lives as an erotic dance of Eros, as the flowers do, — the very Life force of our Mother Earth?

Today, I watch the bumblebees and the butterflies gathering the nectar of the Bee Balm and wonder how much they know of their side job evolved by the flowers to transport their pollen. I rather think that both the bees and flowers know far more than we do, in a way our minds can’t grasp, of this dance with Eros that has enabled them to thrive for so very long.

As I behold the bumblebees up close, I can almost see them wiggle their pollen covered bottoms in anticipation of the next flower. I yearn to feel Bee Balm’s intimate delight each time the bee dips into her offered nectar.