Mellow Yellow

A yellow theme for today. First, some daft yellow jokes that spring to mind.

What is yellow and swings from cake to cake?
Tarzipan.

What is yellow and dangerous?
Shark infested custard or a canary with a machine gun.

What is yellow and writes?
A ball point banana.

What is yellow on the inside and green on the outside?
A banana dressed up as a cucumber.

What's yellow and flashes?
A banana with a loose connection.

 

What is yellow and white and goes down railway lines at over 100 miles an hour?
The train driver's egg sandwich.

 

Oh, what fun. But now on to something less daft. A couple of walks recently have brought the following question to mind: have you noticed how many species of spring flowers are yellow? And, if you can be bothered, which is the odd one out in the following collection?

Primroses, just about coming out.

Daffodils (I've cheated with this one as I took this photograph last year).

Close up of a dandelion.

Lesser Celandine.

Broom.

Gorse.

Hazel catkins.

So, why so many yellow flowers? And I'm not suggesting that there aren't other colours around, it's just that yellow seems to predominate. I think it's because yellow is a very reflective and bright colour and very attractive to the relatively few pollinating insects that are flying around at this time of year. The flowers need to stand out to attract a pollinator and yellow certainly does this.

 

And the odd one out? It's the hazel: it's not pollinated by insects but by the wind and perhaps that's why the individual florets/flowers on the catkin don’t look that pretty? They don't have to attract the bees or hover flies. They just need to dangle in the wind and let nature take its course.

 

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