Unsprung.

Warning: you may find the following text extremely boring but it was written for my own benefit.

I don't watch much television but, there has to be a "but", I do like "Springwatch". Springwatch is a natural history extravaganza with hundreds of cameras being stuck in unlikely places by highly skilled naturalists; for several weeks we can watch aspects of nature we would otherwise never have the opportunity to see and hear detailed and knowledgeable explanations of what we do see.

Today's was the last episode, and the only one I managed to see this year; I watched as a grass snake took a chick from a nest, and swallowed it, and heard why the drake is one of the very few birds to have a penis. The series is dedicated to showing sex and violence, the nation loves it and I expect many young children are allowed to watch it.

"Unsprung" is a follow up, audience participation programme that is broadcast immediately after a few of the episodes; in homage, my blip today is of a broom flower that has been sprung. I'm not a botanist and don't know the correct terminology, but the flower develops with the curly bits (one of the technical terms I do know) enclosed in its lower part (the keel). When the flower is ripe along comes a busy bee to collect the nectar, triggers a spring mechanism, and out pop the curly bits and do their business.

Now I am on really dodgy ground, but I suspect that the very curly bit is the style and carries the stigma (female part) which strikes home first and picks up the pollen from the previous flower, the others are stamens and carry the anthers (male) which fire their load of pollen into the bees hair ready to pollinate the next flower. The sequence is important to reduce inbreeding.