Tchaikovsky composed a little-known piece called "Chorus of Flowers and Insects" to set the scene for an opera that is even less well known — because he never finished it.
The chorus survived, though, and it musically portrays bees, butterflies and other flitting insects in a flowery, and presumably magical, woodland.
Its librettist seems to have embraced the Romantic view of nature, where all wild things lived together in sweet harmony.
But by 1793, the German naturalist Christian Konrad Sprengel suggested that flowers and their pollinators shared what we might call a "quid pro quo" relationship.
That phrase has acquired a somewhat negative connotation, but it simply means "something for something." Many flowering plants depend on insects to carry pollen from one blossom to another, making reproduction possible.
In return, the insects receive nectar, pollen, or floral oils that provide food for themselves and, in many cases, for their offspring.
The flowers we admire are essentially billboards. Their colors, scents and shapes attract pollinators and direct them to nectar in such a way that the insects become dusted with pollen, which they carry to the next blossom they visit.
Even the buzzing so beautifully depicted by Tchaikovsky has a remarkable scientific twist.
As bees and many other insects fly, friction with the air gives them a slight positive electrical charge, while flowers, connected to the ground, often carry a slight negative charge. As the insect approaches, some pollen grains literally leap through the air onto the pollinator's tiny hairs before it even lands.
"Chorus of Flowers and Insects" was intended to evoke the magic of nature. We now know that nature is far more magical than the Romantics ever imagined. The enchantment isn't mythical at all.
It's real. And every summer, it blossoms around us.
