{"id":439,"date":"2019-02-05T03:27:24","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T03:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/?p=439"},"modified":"2019-03-18T07:23:47","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T07:23:47","slug":"the-properly-anthropomorphized-flower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/2019\/02\/05\/the-properly-anthropomorphized-flower\/","title":{"rendered":"The “properly” anthropomorphized flower"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>Very often, I anthropomorphize cells and other biological objects in my drawings. I\u2019ve turned bacteria into pirates<\/a>, phages into bandits<\/a>, and muscle cells into builders<\/a>. It is my hope that presenting biological concepts in this way helps you understand and remember them better or helps you think about them in a new way. In this post, I take anthropomorphism to somewhat of an extreme with what I\u2019m calling a \u201cproperly\u201d anthropomorphized flower. Reading this post, I hope that you\u2019ll develop a deeper appreciation for what a flower really is as we approach Valentine\u2019s day.<\/span>\n

\"Drawing
A \u201cproperly\u201d anthropomorphized flower.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The problem with the smiling flower<\/h2>\n

Although you can find many cute flower cartoons depicting smiling faces surrounded by petals, it\u2019s a bit odd to compare flowers to faces. You see, while plants can certainly sense many of the things we sense with our eyes, noses, mouths, and ears, they don\u2019t have faces per se. For example, the mouths should be distributed more to the leaves and roots. The leaves \u201ceat\u201d sunlight and carbon dioxide while the roots \u201ceat\u201d other nutrients found in soil and fertilizer (e.g. nitrogen and phosphorous).<\/span><\/p>\n

When thinking about its biological function, the flower itself is possibly the most lewd thing one could represent as a face. The flower is censored in my drawing because, in reality, flowers house the reproductive organs of many plants. Insofar as a plant\u2019s reproductive organs can be compared to those of humans, single flowers often contain both male and female parts. In fact \u00a0some flowers can fertilize themselves. In the floral fertilization process, pollen constitutes floral sperm while eggs can be found within the depths of the flower. I find this all very cool but, were I to draw these parts only my anthropomorphized flower, I might turn away some of my audience.<\/span><\/p>\n

If my drawing didn\u2019t focus too much on the flower\u2019s innards and instead focused on its petals, the censor bar might might not be required after all. This is because you might think of a flower\u2019s petals as gorgeous clothes. These beautiful garments help attract pollinators like bees, much like we use clothes, jewelry, and hairstyles to attract mates when going out on the town (hence the dancing flower below).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A
This flower is ready for a night on the town.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In any case, I hope you\u2019ve found my \u201cproperly\u201d anthropomorphized flower enjoyable. With a little more plant know-how, maybe you\u2019ll further appreciate the complexity and life hiding behind the petals you see in your next bouquet!<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Very often, I anthropomorphize cells and other biological objects in my drawings. I\u2019ve turned bacteria into pirates, phages into bandits, and muscle cells into builders. It is my hope that presenting biological concepts in this way helps you understand and remember them better or helps you think about them in a new way. In this … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The “properly” anthropomorphized flower”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,6],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-science-communication","tag-plants"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tylerjford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Anthropomorphized-flower.jpg?fit=2977%2C4030&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pap2RX-75","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":576,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions\/576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tylerjford.com\/landing.html\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}