Genetics analogy
I may have this all wrong, but I don’t think the SEEDS get pollinated.
Man, no wonder my first-year punk never even reached 20 pounds. In fact,
no wonder David and I are childless!
I thought you were supposed to pollinate the female BLOSSOM. The mix of
genes from the female blossom and the male blossom will determine the
genetic make-up of the seeds produced by the resulting fruit.
Seriously, you can think of the pumpkin as just another orange cat.
(Glenn can think of it as a green cat.) In a way, it’s more like a
snail, but stick with the cat for now.
When the punk is in heat, along comes the grower, a honeybee, or an
errant breeze and adds the sperm of a male pusskin to the egg of the
female pusskin. Here’s where you may want to remember the snail, in that
little pusskin, like the snail, can very well pollinate itself, thank
you. Anyway, there are enough sperm in the pollen to fertilize however
many eggs in the blossom.
When pusskin gives birth to a woomful of seeds, they can easily be as
different as when virtuous Tabby gives birth to a litter of seven
kittens, including orange, black, gray, white, calico, gray-and-white,
and black-and-white. In the case of punkins, the seeds could produce
orange, white, pink, cream, gray and even green fruit.
Before writing me off, bear in mind that I ran this analogy past our
county agriculture director before airing it.
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