Nature's pharmacopia,
Tobacco's lovely posy:
Nectar sweet lures the bees
While nicotine repels them.


9/14/08


This poem was inspired by a science news brief in the Boston Globe that actually reported that nicotine does, in fact, appear to serve the purpose of limiting the nectar taken by pollinators of the wild tobacco plant. People who have not been around tobacco, wild or domestic may not know that the flowers are exceedingly fragrant.