The flower and the bee; plant life and pollination . ult stage depend chiefly on pollenand nectar, while the bee-flies feed only on nectar. Flowers with nauseous or indoloid odors, due to the decom-position of some nitrogenous compound, are attractive to fleshor carrion flies. The petals are often flesh-colored, blood-red,dull dark-purple, marked with lurid stripes or spots. Tosome observers they suggest putrefying flesh or decaying car-casses, but in most instances the resemblance is not very appar-ent. There are also malodorous flowers which are yellowishgreen or white. It is chiefly the nau
The flower and the bee; plant life and pollination . ult stage depend chiefly on pollenand nectar, while the bee-flies feed only on nectar. Flowers with nauseous or indoloid odors, due to the decom-position of some nitrogenous compound, are attractive to fleshor carrion flies. The petals are often flesh-colored, blood-red,dull dark-purple, marked with lurid stripes or spots. Tosome observers they suggest putrefying flesh or decaying car-casses, but in most instances the resemblance is not very appar-ent. There are also malodorous flowers which are yellowishgreen or white. It is chiefly the nauseous odor rather than alikeness to putrid substances which draws to flowers carrionand dung flies belonging to the genera Musca, Lucilia, Calli-phora, and Sarcophaga. Many strong-scented odors, which arenot repulsive, are also attractive to flies. 161 THE FLOWER AND THE BEE In damp thickets on the banks of rivers, twining amid thebushes there grows a pretty vine with smilax-hke leaves andumbels of green flowers pollinated by flies. (Fig. 76.) This. Fig. 76. Carrion-Flower. Smilax herbaceaA fly-flower is the carrion-flower and so offensive is its odor that it wellmerits the name. Another carrion-flower is the purple trillium{Trillium erectum). (Fig. 77.) In early spring children oftengather bouquets of its lurid, purple flow^ers which they are soon 162 FLY-FLOWERS
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