Artist Gemma Marmalade is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photography essay. From her project ‘Haeckel Pheromone Testing – Green Fingered‘. To see Gemma’s gallery of projects click on any image.
Green Fingered is a broad creative study inspired by the work of Dr Gerda Haeckel, a German research botanist, who discovered the possibility that those of homosexual persuasion are more likely to have a visceral impact on the growth of plants.
Using Dr Haeckel’s testing theories, pheromone analysis was undertaken using a variety of vegetables to measure levels of ambient human homosexuality during Birmingham Pride 2015.
“As each plant cell has self producing phytohormones and clear evidence of the pheromonic properties of natural attraction, including inter-species vertebrate to plant transference, it is not so far a step to consider that human chemical excretions might be propitious to the stimulation of plant growth…
..the female homosexual endocrine response shows evidence that a unique combination of progesterone derivative 4,16-androstadien-3-one and estra-1,3,5(10), 16-tetraen-3-ol, unseen in any other mammal sexual manifestation, could cultivate ideal conditions for pheromonal transmission, arousing both the plant genotype and its environmental biotics to a superlative extent.”
Dr Gerda Haeckel, 1976
See also:
Green Fingered: A Queer Guide to Botany
Gay Gardens: A Performative Dinner (Green Fingered)
By Gemma Marmalade