The wlkatar are interesting for another reason. It is an example of the rare phenomenon of an interplay between the reproductive cycles of plants and animals. Vital to the well-being of the wlkon is a form of vegetation peculiar to the Meggada and one area somewhat remote from the Meggada (the coast of the continent known as Galimu), a large indigenous arborescence known in Wlko as ssihshesmuk or, to Gamma Draconis explorers, as the shishemu (Bultonia shishemu or, vulgariter, flame tree). This tree grows both in isolation–"splendid isolation", as Boulton aptly remarked, given its size and shapeliness–and also in groves of various size, where it may not be the only species of tree. In bloom, it is a solid mass of blossoms of an extraordinary color which challenges description: a kind of deep golden-scarlet of a sunlit brilliance which (as Boulton phrased it) "almost makes one turn the head away for fear of damage to one’s eyes". The name "flame tree" given by early (pre-scientific) explorers is easily understood.

To rehearse much previously-published information B. shishemu blooms very irregularly–never two years in a row, and as many as eight or ten years or more will commonly pass between flowering. Nor does it flower at consistent times of the year. In a climate as equable as the Meggada, this is no cause for wonder; but the same equability suggests that it will not be easy to identify the factors that trigger the shishemu reproductive cycle, which have hitherto resisted identification. (And cycle it must be, since all shishemu bloom at the same time.)

When the shishemu trees of the Meggada come into bloom, it is not the brilliant inflorescences that catch the wlkos’ attention, though they do comment upon it. Rather, there is some powerful fragrance which, however, is not sensible to all noses. No morphologist from our world, for example, has ever reported being able to smell anything except a vaguely floral scent which is pleasant enough but seems out of proportion to the brilliance of the inflorescences. The monuxes claim to detect no odor at all. All sexually mature V. vulcus, however, of both sexes, report being made practically dizzy by a fragrance which they describe very variously.

Every wlko and wlkwy who is capable of doing so makes his or her way to one of a small number of gathering spots, each traditional to a group of their clans (generally three to seven). There, for a period of four or five days–that is, for as long as the shishemu trees are in bloom–male V. vulcus are in a virtually continuous state of sexual readiness, and copulate almost continuously (between naps) with male and female wlko alike.

Sec.9.2 A variety of physiological specializations of the wlko are seen to be highly adaptive to the conduct of a wlkatar.

Sec.9.2.1 The very young wlko are taken care of in a sort of nursery presided over by pregnant and lactating females, and by very old wlko of both sexes, most of whom enjoy both being around kits, in the society of kinsmen not often seen and old friends. The lack of sexual receptivity of pregnant females is seen therefore to be an adaptive trait: copulating with them at a wlkatar would be "a waste of SkhtuS", as the wlko say forthrightly. A loss of interest in copulation, in fact, is the only outward sign of pregnancy until, very late in the term, a more or less pronounced thickening of the belly and the slight enlargement and cherry-red coloration of the four lactating teats is evident.

Sec.9.2.2 As for the lactating females, they are very definitely receptive sexually, and a slightly crude expression that the wlkon use among themselves is that newborns (as wlko of both sexes put the double-entendre) "open up a cunt" (i.e. for both birth and copulation). However, lactating females are impregnable. Whether the wlko figured this out for themselves or were told by morphologists, they know it is a fact; from the point of view of procreation, coupling with a lactating female at a wlkatar makes as much sense as masturbating. (Fn 40) Besides, lactating females have a job to do, which only they can perform, and very young wlko have to be nursed at short intervals.

Sec.9.2.3 Sexually mature ("green[-eyed]") unmarried females are also in this group, acting more or less as baby-sitters. The social norms of the wlko hold that it is "not right" for unmarried girls to have babies, because they can’t be properly cared for. (Fn 41) That said, every morphology field report of a wlkatar attests to an occasional coupling with a lactating female–immediately identifiable by her highly colored nipples, so there can be no question of confusion on the wlko’s part. Wlkon seem abashed when asked about it, deny doing any such foolish thing, and so on. The few who are a little more forthcoming indicate that they where too enchanted by the beauty of the female in question to think about anything else. One male, known as "Drushka", was certainly forthright: "Look, even at a wlkatar", he said, "there’s fucking and there’s fucking. You can be just about out of your mind with wanting, with black [an erect penis] that never slips [returns to its sheath], and not care a drop of hkshihh about what butt or cunt you juice into. But fucking that one green-eyed honey was something I’ll never forget. Ever. She was beautiful. So beautiful. I couldn’t help it. I don’t know why I didn’t lose my SkhtuS before I even got all the way into her, I was so pleased. And she–well, she wasn’t just lying there thinking about her husbands. She had her tail around my thigh so tight I could hardly fuck, and she was purring like thunder. I wasn’t me, I know that. I’m no prize. I know I’m no prize. She was just keyed up. With all that slotting and linking going on all around her. And the scent of hkshihh and SkhtuS in the air so thick you could hardly draw a breath. That sweetheart, she’d have been happy with a monux. But me, I knew what I was doing. I was fucking her. I’ll never forget what it felt like. The whole thing. The whole thing. She had–I was–well, I mean I kept telling myself I was dreaming."

Once a girl or pair of girls have co-mates, they all but invariably participate in wlkatar. One family group I visited had a sort of family joke about that. As the story goes, arrangements for the marriage between "Lucas" and "Mark" and "Violet" and "Rose" had just been completed when the shishemu burst into bloom, and off they all went to the wlkatar. The girls were not only young but very beautiful, it seems, and as the wlko called "Lucas" narrated, laughing softly, "I didn’t get to fuck [our wife] Rose until other guys’ come was literally running down her thighs, and then the only way I got her was by linking with this young thug, great handsome hunk he was, while he was still eeling [copulating with her] for dear life. So as soon as he finished I whipped my black out of him in the nick of time, my nuts snapped the very moment I got all the way into her cunt. That was my wedding night. One fuck. Well, one juicing. What there was of it. Mark never got into her at all. Neither one of us ever did get to fuck [our wife] Violet, that time, so we know her kids–those over there–handsome little rascals, aren’t they?–aren’t ours. And Rose’s first kids didn’t come until a couple of years later."

Note: the wlko have what is obviously a myth (collected by Ornstein and Kitell) about "olden times" and the origin of wlkatar, which the myth says were expressly for the purpose of impregnating virgin females. This was supposedly at a time predating the institution of marriage and the formation of family groups. The myth tells us that males and females lived apart, because otherwise the males would eat the children. (Vulcid folklore suspects rupellid males of such conduct even now.) The males "amused themselves" by copulating with one another (supposedly the origin of that necessity), and the females reared children, the newborns from the last wlkatar and the older crop from an earlier one. Then, when the shishemu bloomed, the females with all their young would congregate with the adult males, as they do now, and the sexually active males would "open" all the pubescent juvenile males, "make men" out of any cold adults, and impregnate every fertile female in sight, most particularly including virgin females who, according to this legend, had the unique privilege among females at a wlkatar of being able to choose/reject the males who coupulated with them. (Matrons, and sexually ready wlkon of all ages, by contrast, would accept any erection offered to them, and the myth is pointedly clear on the subject that the taboos mentioned in Sec.7.2 didn’t yet exist.)

It is extremely difficult sort out noise and signal in this farago.

Sec.9.2.4 Impotent ("cold" or "white") males are immediately recognizable from such signs as white inguinal fur and muzzle-patches, and since the wlko regard impotence as a pitiable state, and "making a man" to be a rewarding social act as well as a pleasurable one, a "cold" male at a wlkatar not only doesn’t stay "cold" for long, he is apt to be penetrated by "red" males one after another, even though the annals of field observation of V. vulcus indicate that a single act of anal intercourse between wlkon almost never fails to restore a male’s sexual readiness. (Depending on the size and duration of the wlkatar, a "white-furred" male will be sodomized anywhere from a couple of dozen times to a hundred or more. (Fn 42) I have personally witnessed a fully-erect wlko, who was obviously intent on an unoccupied female, notice the white testicles of the male of a copulating pair he was walking past; he thereupon turned out of his path to sodomize a male who, so far from needing such attention, revealed by his moaning and purring that he was well along toward a vaginal orgasm.

Sec.9.2.5 Sexually mature adolescent males still living in their parents’ family unit commonly have their first sexual experiences with wlkwim (females) at these mass matings. Of course, from the time they are "started" or "opened" by their co-fathers, at least if they’ve been healthy enough to do so, they’ve been copulating with one another "almost continuously" (Boulton, Murdoch, etc., and personal observation). Since copulation with sisters or mothers is strongly taboo, and the family groups are small and semi-isolated, most unmarried adolescent wlkon experience their first heterosexual coupling at these mass matings. (Fn 43)

Sec.9.2.6 Remarkably, as already indicated (Sec.9.2.3), not all fertile females are impregnated at a wlkatar. It is a testimony to the low fertility rate of the wlko that despite the very high incidence of procreative activity in healthy family groups, and the virtually continuous copulation of the wlkatar, the birth rate is moderate; and despite the rarity of fatal disease, the longevity of the animals, and the absence of violence, the wlko population, if it is growing at all, is growing very slowly, and it was very slow to recover from the predations of collectors and hunters two hundred years ago.

Note: Male/femal sodomy. There is one aspect to the "unusual" sexual conduct at wlkatar that has so far resisted explanation, mainly because the obvious purpose of these indiscriminate couplings is procreation. And that is: at a wlkatar, and only at a wlkatar, a male wlko will sometimes penetrate a wlkwy anally. Evidence suggests that this is not accidental, i.e. not a sort of "any port in a storm" phenomenon by a male to groggy with exhaustion to know what he is doing, although some observers have suggested exactly that. (A sexually forward wlko who approaches a copulating pair has a choice between sodomizing the male or the female. He will usually choose the male, in part because his anus will typically be more accessible, obviously, but also for physiological reasons (Sec.4.2.5)–and in addition this seems in fact to be the usual way of guaranteeing that one’s penis will be "next in line" for a desirable female’s vagina.)

According to both Peabody’s and my own observations, female sodomy typically starts with the copulating pair in normal position for vaginal intercourse, chest-to-chest. In six of the of the 19 cases I personally observed, an ithyphallic wlko male sodomized a female whose vagina was in use, contriving somehow to persuade the copulating couple to roll on their sides; in 11 of the remaining 13, a normal vaginal penetration had already taken place when a discussion arose between the male and female animals (without any cessation in sexual movements) that seemingly led to withdrawal, a slight shift in position and reinsertion into the anus. In the other two cases the first penetration was anal.

Further, even prior to Peabody’s classic report, it was noted (with surprise) that a clear majority of such couplings at wlkatar involved mates. Peabody speculated that the facts can relate to reproduction after all: a wlko adding his own sperm to the accumulation in his mate’s vagina would so to say be contrary to the spirit of indscriminate mass mating. And that factor may indeed play a role. It remains to be ascertained whether the present author’s idea has any validity, viz., that such behavior is largely or wholly social and not biologically adaptive. In the normal sexual activity of V. vulcus, anal intercourse is a strictly male/male act, and is not only pleasurable for both the penetrator and his recepticle, it is an important social act. Beyond the fact that the co-mated males depend absolutely on one another for sexual viability, it must be emphasized that their copulation is a genuine sexual act, that is, it is intimate and pleasurable, but even more signficantly it serves to heighten and reinforce shared feelings of honor, duty, obligation, gratitude, affection, and so on. On the other hand, there is no reason, social or otherwise, for a wlko to penetrate his female mate(s)’s anus, and it is the subject of a pretty severe taboo. (At any rate, the taboo is rarely broken, or seems to be so.)

Therefore, my suggestion is this: one way of looking at the act is that in coupling with his wife the way he would couple with his co-mate, a male is telling her, wordlessly, "You are as important to me as my co-mate is". If so, it may be read as a significant gesture of conjugal devotion. In support of this interpretation, at a wlkatar I have seen such copulating pairs, still coupled, lie quietly, tails and limbs braided together, for more than a half hour after the male ejaculated. The overt signs of affection–licking and so on–on the part of the female were continued as long as the male lay on her. On one occasion the post-orgasmic male was himself penetrated anally and sodomized to ejaculation by a young wlko who probably had been hoping to couple with the female, but the older male (a mate of the wlkwy, naturally) gave no sign of leaving his post. Indeed, although he seemed oblivious to the presence of a penis in his rectum, I could see that he was bracing himself, apparently so as to minimize the weight of two males on his co-wife’s body.

For purely physiological reasons, as outlined above, it is very doubtful that sodomizing a female can be as physically gratifying as penetrating her vaginally, so any kind of crude "pleasure principle" can be provisionally ruled out. Nevertheless, I have some reason for believing that heterosexual anal intercourse is commoner in family groups than is admitted. It is "shameful" enough that it is doubtful any wlko would readily admit to it–even wlkon and wlkwim whom I had personally observed performing such an act at a wlkatar have later denied that it had happened at all. But what makes me suspicious is the usual reaction to a question about anal intercourse, namely embarrassment. Embarrassment is quite unlike the perplexed indignation that greets most questions about sexual taboos (e.g., "If you ‘go cold’ and you have open [sexually-active adolescent] boys in the family, why can’t they, rather than the monuxes ‘make you a man’?").