This month we gather for Pride parades and parties that showcase our communities in all their vibrancy. And although I love all these things, I like to celebrate by going for a walk because nature is exuberantly queer. As attacks on queer rights have intensified, you might have noticed that a common critique is that queerness is “unnatural.” But it’s really quite ordinary.
June is a delightful time to recognize queer life, thanks to all the beautiful biological activity unfurling around us in these weeks. Here in New York State, for example, we are transitioning into summer. You might still catch some of the ephemeral plants of spring, a number of which have queer reproductive strategies. One of my favorites is the jack-in-the-pulpit.
Follow me on our walk, deep into the shady woods, and perhaps you’ll see them. About a foot tall, they’re distinguished by their long spathe, a hood that curls up and over the flower. Would you guess that this one plant is not just a jack-in-the-pulpit but a jill-in-the-pulpit and a jack-and-jill-in-the pulpit? By which I mean that this single plant goes through phases during which it develops male flowers (having a stamen), and then both male and female structures (including a pistil), before finally becoming entirely female. This strategy helps the species maintain genetic diversity by maximizing an individual’s chances to mate with others.
Continue on your way, and maybe you’ll encounter trilliums, especially if you live farther upstate. You’ll recognize this ephemeral by its three bold leaves, most likely in shades of pink or purple or white. Like the jack-and-jill-in-the-pulpit, trilliums are intersex — a term used interchangeably with “bisexual” by botanists (despite their differing meanings for humans), leading to the rise of this plant as a symbol of human bisexuality. In an excellent example of mutualism, ants distribute the seeds of the trillium, first eating the fatty tissues attached to the seeds and then carrying those seeds to fertile plant nurseries, their colony’s nitrogen-rich waste-disposal areas.
As you walk, listen for birds. House finches, quite common throughout the state, are particularly talkative this time of year. Their calls are a sharp cheep, their songs a chaotic string of staccato notes. Watch for small birds with slim shoulders; the males’ feathers are suffused with a rosy red, the females a tawny brown. These chatty, blushing males have been reported to engage in same-sex partnerships — one of dozens of species of birds known to do so. That is most likely an undercount, given the taboo around research on queer animals in biology.
In New York, June is the beginning of mushroom season, which makes it for me, a mycologist, or fungi scientist, one of my favorite times of year. For months, these subversive organisms have been organizing out of sight, sipping sugar from the roots of plants, gathering strength, studying the cues of the collective. With the increased daylight, plants are sharing more carbon, rains are hydrating their fungal tissues, and insects are abuzz, ready to disperse the mushrooms’ spores.
We can very rarely predict mushroom fruitings; they are often ephemeral and surprising. When they burst forth, they are frequently unabashed. They can be colored a deep, royal purple and oozing with slime. They can be crowned with golden scales or dripping with exudate, a fluid released during metabolism. They can be asexual, intersex or have tens of thousands of mating types, or potential genetic combinations for sexual reproduction. For fungi, the odds are good and the goods are odd.
Queer strategies and ways of being have evolved independently innumerable times. In fact, in nature, diversity — or difference — is the premise. It is through the dynamics of difference that habitats form and new species take shape. Given enough time, everything changes, be it an individual, a population, a species, a lineage. It is through these changes, these little molecular uprisings, that we become a community, human and otherwise.
Patricia Ononwiu Kaishian, a mycologist, is the author of “Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature.”
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