. Botany for young people : Part II. How plants behave ; how they move, climb, employ insects to work for them, & c. Botany. 34 HOW PLANTS EMPLOY INSECTS TO WORK FOR THEM, Take notice that these anthers do not open by trap-doors, like those of Barberry, nor by long slits as in most flowers. As in most of the Heath Family (to which Kalmia belongs), they consist of a pair of sacs, side by side, which open by a round hole at the top (see Fig. 29). So, when the bowed filament is set free and flies forward, the grains of pollen in the anther are projected, like shot from a child's pea-shooter.
. Botany for young people : Part II. How plants behave ; how they move, climb, employ insects to work for them, & c. Botany. 34 HOW PLANTS EMPLOY INSECTS TO WORK FOR THEM, Take notice that these anthers do not open by trap-doors, like those of Barberry, nor by long slits as in most flowers. As in most of the Heath Family (to which Kalmia belongs), they consist of a pair of sacs, side by side, which open by a round hole at the top (see Fig. 29). So, when the bowed filament is set free and flies forward, the grains of pollen in the anther are projected, like shot from a child's pea-shooter. A bit of whalebone, to the end of which two pieces of quill filled with small shot are made fast, is not a bad representation of one of these stamens. This really must be a contrivance for discharging pollen at some object. If the stigma around which the stamens are marshalled be that object, the target is a small one, yet some one or more of the ten shots might hit the mark. But the discharges can hardly ever take place at all without the aid of an insect. Bees are the insects thus far observed to frequent these flowers; and it is inter- esting to watch the operations of a bumble-bee upon them. The bee, remaining on the wing, circles for a moment over each flower, thrusting his proboscis all round the ovary at the bottom; in doing this it jostles and lets off the springs, and receives upon the under side of its body and its legs successive charges of pollen. Flying to another blossom, it brings its pollen-dusted body against the stigma, and, commonly revolving on it as if on a pivot while it sucks the nectar in the bottom of the flower-cup, liberates the ten bowed stamens, and receives fresh charges of pollen from that flower while fertilizing it with the pollen of the preceding one. This account is founded on the observations of Professor Beal, of Michigan, who also states that when a cluster of blossoms is covered with fine gauze, no stamen gets liberated of itself while fit
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectbotany, bookyear1872
