Merwilla plumbea bulb tunics in spring

The outer covering of the above-ground visible part of the substantial Merwilla plumbea bulb is worn like clothes, no longer as body parts.

It is so useful to produce the clothes one wears from body parts gradually discarded, not having to buy. Neither modesty nor ego comes into it when by automatic process everyone is dressed the same against cold and heat.

Beauty enters when the flowers arrive in season. Even that is pure functionality, no competition against bulbous Joneses. Should other species find one pretty, that is totally their affair, as long as they do no harm.

Is it conceivable that flowering plants will one-day start taking self-protective, evasive action against humanity by evolving into ugly forms? Evolution is such a functional affair. The question becomes: what will attract a bee or a bird, but not a destructive human?

The defence: Us people garden, create even botanical gardens, propagate many plants by the thousands: humanity is a constructive force studying and working with nature.

The prosecution: Monocultures replace nature solely for feeding the masses of people and making money. Selfishness is the driver of human endeavour. Even the belated attempts by the people at saving the earth do not spring from any true magnanimity or a sense of interspecies fairness.

The real prosecution does not bother to analyse pernickety points of law in the case for the earth; the judge is deaf! The laws of nature sentence and execute without hearing or jury when the weather goes beyond its usual extremes.