. Botany for young people : Part II. How plants behave ; how they move, climb, employ insects to work for them, & c. Botany. AND CROSS-FERTILIZE THEIR FLOWERS. 37 has bent so far forwards as to point downwards, and the stigma is not yet ready for pollen, its two branches being united. So a butterfly, in the act of drawing nectar from this flower, will get the under side of its body dusted with pollen, but will not come near the reflexed and still immature style. But in a flower a day older, the stamens are found to be coiled up (the opposite way from what they were in the bud) aud turned d
. Botany for young people : Part II. How plants behave ; how they move, climb, employ insects to work for them, & c. Botany. AND CROSS-FERTILIZE THEIR FLOWERS. 37 has bent so far forwards as to point downwards, and the stigma is not yet ready for pollen, its two branches being united. So a butterfly, in the act of drawing nectar from this flower, will get the under side of its body dusted with pollen, but will not come near the reflexed and still immature style. But in a flower a day older, the stamens are found to be coiled up (the opposite way from what they were in the bud) aud turned down out of the way, bringing the anthers nearly where the stigma was the day before; while the style has come up to where the stamens were the day before, and its stigma with branches outspread is now ready for pollen, — is just in position and condition for being dusted with the pollen which the butterfly has received from the anthers of an earlier blossom. 75. Campanulas and Sabbatias also mature their anthers and shed their pollen long before the stigmas open so as to receive any; they, too, are fertilized by in- sects carrying pollen from an earlier to a later flower. To understand how it is done in each particular case the flowers themselves should be studied in the field and garden. 76. Dimorphous Flowers, that is, flowers of two kinds as to length or position of stamens and pistil, but both sorts perfect, remain to be considered. In these the difference is only in the stamens and pistil, usually merely in their relative length, and very likely to be noticed only by the attentive observer. A good case of this may readily be seen 77. In Iloustonia. The com- monest species, the little blue- eyed Houstonia coerulea, looks up to us from every low mead- ow in spring as soon as the turf gets dry enough to set foot upon. In different patches of it, some flowers will show the tips of the four stamens slight- ly projecting ; as many others will show the two stigmas only. The two
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectbotany, bookyear1872
