A Life Without Waste

For the flowers blooming on hills and fields, the prosperity of their descendants is the greatest task, handed down and inherited from their ancestors.

Plants’ ways of pollinating and carrying their seeds are various—using the wind, borrowing the power of insects, animals, and birds, having water carry them, and so on.

Speaking in terms of seasons, spring, summer, and autumn—when the creatures that help pollinate plants are actively about—are the most suitable times for blooming and bearing fruit; yet there are also flowers that deliberately choose the cold season, when creatures are few, to bloom.

The camellia, for instance, is one such. Why does it bloom so beautifully in winter, when the odds of pollination are low?

When I asked an expert, I heard that it blooms for the sake of birds like the Japanese white-eye (mejiro) that come to Japan in winter as migrants.

Who decided this law of nature? It is a mystery to me.

Compared to humans, who can never become perfect, the workings of plants make them creatures of flawless, orderly system with no waste—and I simply bow my head to their way of living.