Friday Fabulous Flower - Squash

This squash vine is clamoring through a hosta bed next to the patio. No one planted any squashes any where near here, but the tree rats must have missed one of the seeds provided as winter fodder. Hostas have nice leaves, but these are long done flowering, so each morning the new squash flowers are quite cheerful. They open with the dawn and by midday they are wilted. Squashes are monoecious (one-house) plants meaning that they have separate flowers for producing pollen and for producing fruit and seed. This is a pollen flower and the anthers are fused into a central column where the pollen is presented as a pollinator reward. Oh, wait, that's a floral visitor, a potenial pollinator, emerging with a considerable dusting of pollen having pretty well cleaned this flower out. The stigma of fruiting flowers is quite similar but offers no reward, a case of deception. The flowers, both kinds, are edible and can be used in cooking, usually in the bud stage. Best squash dish TPP ever had was a squash blossom souffle in Italy.