Sex Pistils
An entire story of procreation and birth in one tiny specimen. The fruit of Acanthus – a shapely house of seeds, ripe and bursting with sexual analogy. A dissected drama of ovaries and ejections, fecundity, gestation, expulsion, fruition.
A pistil is the female reproductive part of a flower. The fruit body can also be called the gynoecium (gyne – woman, oikos – house). In Acanthus the seeds start to grow and are attached at the base of their chamber by means of a funiculus. At maturity dehiscence happens – a spontaneous splitting due to a gradual rise in tension along a weakening line of resistance. The seed is expulsed by a jaculator. If the process fails, the seed withers, the ovary chambers dry. Sometimes the ovary bursts with such force that it is blown apart and irreparably damaged.