Word: pistils
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...popular introduction at the ICFF, for example, came from renowned product designer Yves Behar, who was hired by a small, San Francisco-- based company called Fleurville to create a cool high chair. The result is the Calla chair, a pistil-shape foam-and-aluminum piece that will retail for a cool $925 and, like the Bugaboo, will come in customized colors. Similarly, Philippe Starck has applied his eye to strollers, portable high chairs and diaper bags for McLaren, the popular British stroller brand. Designers like David Netto have found their niche giving such nursery staples as cribs and changing tables...
...genetic freaks with hereditary male sterility. Researcher Frank Eaton of die U.S. Agriculture Department, working at Texas A. & M., found a chemical key that may unlock all the closed doors. Eaton noted that a weed killer, lightly applied, sterilized the male stamens of cotton, left the more protected female pistil apparently unhurt. If this means what hybridizers hope it means, it may be the key to hybridizing all crops-and vastly increasing their yield...
...pistil of an alfalfa flower is a strong spring held in tension by two "keel petals." When the bee alights on the petals, the pistil snaps up and out. This process ensures cross-fertilization by showering the bee with pollen and spanking other pollen loose from the bee's body...
...often the flower plays too rough, and the snap of the pistil knocks the bee for a loop. Tough wild bees will take this punishment. Gently bred tame bees will not. They sneak up on the flower and steal its nectar stealthily without springing the pistil. The flower thus remains unfertilized and bears no alfalfa seed...
...Nebraska and other regions that produce alfalfa seed, wild bees are getting scarcer. In recent years, the yield of seed per acre has been steadily going down. Dr. Hixson has been crossing alfalfa strains, breeding them for gentleness of pistil. He hopes to develop flowers with so soft a wallop that even the timidest bee will not be afraid to alight on them...