The Mesquite (Prosopsis glandulosa) is Blooming

True enough, the mesquite is blooming in these parts. Seems like a blooming tree should attract someone to monitor the progress. That’s right. Someone who is likely to document that which facilitates the production of the valuable mesquite bean, the mesquite pollinators.

Surely, in the old days, many were the scientists who collected round the blooming mesquite, nets at the ready, nets in use, swooping up the hapless pollinators. Yes. Soon those miserable bugs found themselves gassed to death and on their way to the nearest agriculture experiment station. Or maybe not. Maybe, none of that ever happened.

The collision of botany and entomology, also known as botemology, may be a fun hobby for old naturalists. The fun begins with, What are you doing there sir?

Botemology! Use your eyeballs, nitwit. Can ye not espy that I am accomplishing botemology, ignorant young fool or whippersnapper.

Hmm. The more I dwell on or put my mind thereto, the ancient science of botemology, the more I like it. Yes. Botemology combines the best qualities of its twain parent sciences into one discipline, and that discipline is far less confusing than ecology, or socio-biology, or some other bullshit. Yes. Botemology is the science, fer me. From now on, in the unlikely event that anyone asks my profession, I may retort, botemologist.

This morning a lone botemologist gathers at the blossoming mesquite. The pollinators on the mesquite are Diptera, Hymenoptera and one Lepidoptera. This one, for Goddess Sakes.