Deacon Jasmine

The moon was not quite full last night but you could see it, which means no fog, which means a warm and fragrant night. For the first time this year, the night-blooming jasmine exploded across the deck with its perfume that has to rank right up there with lemon blossoms as the best the earth has to offer.

Bumblebees seem to love lemon blossoms. When Sri YogiPlot is reincarnated he would like to come back as a bumblebee (who plays bass).

But night-blooming jasmine blooms only at night. What pollinates it? Are there bees that flit around at night? Or is there some species-specific pollinating bird or insect that waits for the fog to dissipate so they can locate the plant?



Wait! Plotnik just took this picture. It's daylight. The plant is blooming. So, it's the name that's wrong. It ought to be called Night-Scenting Jasmine, because we can all see the blossoms, in broad daylight. So the plant blooms day AND night but only gives off its fragrance at night, and only when it's very warm.

Right? Or does something else happen at night when it's perfuming, that we can't see? Do the blossoms, like, strut their stuff in a provocative way, sure to attract some lazy-ass bozo bee who has been waiting in the weeds all day, napping until the sun goes down?

Maybe that's what Donald Fagan meant in "Deacon Blues" --

"I'll rise when the sun goes down
Cover every game in town
A world of my own
Ill make it my home sweet home"