OK, I have made time to do some reading - there's a lot more to do yet, but
I'll concede the point! The strange thing is that this argument was raging
even when I was working, but I never had much time to look into it.
Syllabuses demanded at best the neodarwinian approach, so it got neglected.

Colin

"P van Rijckevorsel" wrote in message
...
Well, just to emphasize this once again:
"random mutation"s do not have much to do with evolution.

Co-evolution with insects is of very great importance, but chance plays
only
a limited part.

Would not be all that surprised to find a 'cheesy' plant with a blue mould
growing through it. I lost a great deal of my ability to be surprised when
discovering greenhouse plants ;-)
PvR

c.mcculloch schreef
PvR is right - evolution doesn't plan anything. In this case, I'd
suggest
that rather than try to imitate the aroma of cheese, this one just
happened
by random mutation, and turned out to be popular with insect pollinators.
That plant therefore produced more seeds than others, and passed the
cheesy
trait to its offspring. Now if you could find one with blue mould growing
through it...

Colin


"Iris Cohen" wrote
Some years ago I had a stapeliad type plant, I forget the name, whose
flowers smell exactly like cheese. Presumably its pollinator was some kind
of cheese fly. My question: mother animals in the wild don't leave their
milk
lying around to turn into cheese. I understand cheese is strictly a human
discovery. So how did a flower evolve that smells like cheese?
Iris,