'Nature embraces queer people': inside the Kew show about the LGBTQ+ side of plants

Queer Nature celebrates the astonishing diversity of plants - and looks at how they have inspired LGBTQ+ groups. Our writer enters a world of bisexual flowers and asexual treesThe Ruizia mauritiana is a large green shrub with cascading leaves shaped like lovehearts. There's one just off the main walkway through the magnificent Temperate House in London's Kew Gardens, a Victorian marvel nearly 200 metres long. Among all the surrounding greenery, the plant looks unassuming - but examples of this specimen are extremely rare. In fact, by the mid-1990s, it was thought to be extinct in the wild. But then came some thrilling news: a 10-metre tall example had been spotted in the Mauritian highlands. And soon Kew's scientists were wading through a guava thicket in the east African island nation to take some cuttings.Those scientists would go on to make a remarkable discovery. Previously, the Ruizia mauritiana was thought only to grow male flowers (whose stamen produce pollen). But, during its cultivation, researchers realised that this wasn't the case: the sex of this plant's flowers depends on the temperature. In hot conditions, it grows male flowers. But in cooler climates, it produces female ones (whose stigmata receive pollen). Continue reading...