The flower and the bee; plant life and pollination (1918) (14799146673)

Lilium philadelphicum
Identifier: flowerbeeplant00love (find matches)
Title: The flower and the bee; plant life and pollination
Year: 1918 (1910s)
Authors: Lovell, John Harvey, 1860-1939
Subjects: Fertilization of plants
Publisher: New York, C. Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden
Digitizing Sponsor: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden



Text Appearing Before Image:
amiliar in every flower-garden, dis-play the most vivid shades of crimson and scarlet and, as thename indicates, exhale a pleasant fragrance. (Fig. 59.) Theyare adapted to pollination by butterflies and day-flying moths.The nectar lies at the bottom of a long calyx-tube beyond thereach of honey-bees, which I have seen vainly thrusting theirtongues down the centre of the flowers, probing between thepetals, and even looking under the corolla. The carmine flowers of the stemless catchfly (Silene acaulis)^which grows in the higher Alps, are very frequently visited bybutterflies, upon which they are dependent for pollination.Two species of Lychnis have beautiful bright-red flowers,which are very attractive to butterflies. Twenty-eight dif-ferent species of butterflies have been taken on the handsome,red flowers of the soapwort (Saponaria ocijmoides); the pinks(Dianthus) also have the nectar so deeply concealed that it canbe reached only by Lepidoptera, a part of the elegant red flowers 128
Text Appearing After Image:
Fig. 60. Orange-Red Lily. Lilium philadelphicA butterfly-flower THE FLOWER AND THE BEE being adapted to butterflies, and a part to diurnal hawk-moths.As the honey gets more deeply concealed and access moredirectly limited to butterflies, we find, says Hermann Mueller,pari passu among the Caryophyllacea; (pink family) increasingdevelopment of sweet scents, bright-red colors, fine markingsround the entrance of the flower, and indentations at the cir-cumference. All these characters, which are so attractive tous, seem to have been produced by the similar tastes of butter-flies. This conclusion is much strengthened by the fact thatnocturnal flowers are usually white and without variegation. The wild orange-red lily (Lilimn philadelphicum), whichgrows in dry, upland pastures, is poHinated by butterflies(Fig. 60), while the wild yellow lily (Lilium canadense), whichblooms along the marshy river-banks, is pollinated by bees.The bee-lily is an inverted, bell-shaped flower with broad over-lapp