Most plants are hermaphrodite, even if some of them (hazel, for example) keep their male and female flowers apart. But some plants are dioecious, i.e. they have separate sexes. Some of our most familiar wild plants, such as nettle and red campion, are dioecious.

Lots of trees are hermaphroditic — that is, their flowers contain both male and female reproductive parts. Other species have male trees and female trees, which you can tell apart by looking at their flowers: The male reproductive parts are the pollen-laden stamen; the female parts their egg-holding pistils.

In trees, sex exists beyond the binary of female and male. Some, such as cedar, mulberry, and ash trees, are dioecious, meaning each plant is distinctly female or male. Others, such as oak, pine, and fig trees are monoecious, meaning they have male and female flowers on the same plant.

Yes, trees can be male or female. And sometimes they switch it up. Scientists have known for some time that trees not only have a sex, but can sometimes switch between sexes. While many trees have both male and female reproductive parts, others have just one or the other.

Many people use one or a combination of the following pronouns: he, she, they, xe, ze, and more. Some people do not use any pronouns and are called by their names. Everyone has a way to be referred to – learning someone’s pronouns is essential to communicating respectfully with one another.

I use the pronouns she/her to help normalise discussions about gender, especially for the trans and non-binary communities. So, what’s the difference between sex and gender? Put simply, sex is your physical body or your biology. Gender identity is who you are as a person, socially, emotionally and psychologically.

– she/her/hers (for someone who might identify as female), – they/them/their (for someone who might not identify strictly as male or female, these pronouns are considered ‘gender neutral’; also used when referring to multiple people).

Pronoun pairs can be used to communicate a number of nuanced things. Using she/they as an example, the most common and straightforward is, “I identify as a woman, but also as non-binary. I don’t feel womanhood tells my full story, but I’m not fully divested from it, either.”

Why they/them? It is normal in the English language to use they/them pronouns when we don’t know the gender of the person to which we’re referring, or if we want our sentence to be applicable to all genders. This isn’t new – the saying “Everybody loves their own mother” has been used since around late 1300.

gender-neutral

This is a pretty common gender-neutral pronoun and it can be used in the singular. In fact, “they” was voted as the Word of the Year in 2015. Ze/hir/hir (Tyler ate hir food because ze was hungry.) Ze is pronounced like “zee” can also be spelled zie or xe, and replaces she/he/they.

The singular “they” is a generic third-person pronoun used in English. It’s not the only third-person singular pronoun—other third-person singular pronouns are “she” and “he” as well as less common options such as “ze” or “hen.”