What do a dozen roses, a peach pie, and a multi-billion dollar allergy industry all have in common? They all result directly from plants having sex – lots of sex. In spite of this, most people don’t think of plants being especially sexy or even having a gender. In this course we’ll explore the secret sex lives of the green world around us. We’ll learn how to tell the sex of a plant and where plant babies come from. We’ll discuss how plants get around, both metaphorically and physically. Over the course of the semester we’ll learn how sex is determined in plants and under what conditions sex or gender might change. We will also think about when it pays for plants to have sex with themselves, how to attract those buzzing matchmakers, and how or when plants wait for Mr. or Ms. Right.

Wikipedia is the first stop for information for everyone from undergraduates to law makers. Because of the nature of content creation on Wikipedia, it suffers from similar biases that humans have. The bias we'll concern ourselves with is plant blindness. There are pages upon pages about sex in furry things with eyeballs, but much less about sex in plants. Making information available that is representative of the diversity in the natural world is an important task. You'll take on one small piece of this communal task during the course of this class. Enjoy!