Flowers and their friends

It would be very stupid indeed to try to read a book written in Arabic or Hebrew; we should soon tire and put it down.

It is just as uninteresting to read English words whose meaning we do not understand; we might as well devote ourselves to a foreign and unknown tongue.

I hope you will never do it. If you do not know what a word means, find out. There is a list of words you may not know at the back of this book to help you. They are all words used in the book, and if you look you may not find them as stupid as you think. Some day you will discover that the dictionary is quite an exciting and interesting volume.

Meantime enjoy the flowers and their insect friends all you can, and be sure you know the meaning of all the words that tell about them.

Your friend, THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS.

PAGE MORNING-GLORY STORIES 1 THE FLOWER 3 THIS IS THE FLOWER SO BRIGHT AND GAY 11 THE CALYX 13 BLOSSOM DEAR 14 WHAT HAPPENED IN THE GARDEN 16 THE OVULES 23 THE LEAVES 27 TO THE MORNING-GLORY 29 THE CONVOLVULUS FAMILY 30

STORIES ABOUT THE GERANIUM FAMILY 47 TROPÆOLUM STORIES: TROPÆOLUM HONEY 49 THE TROPÆOLUM 50 WHO LIES CURLED UP 57 MORE ABOUT THE TROPÆOLUM 58 JEWELWEED STORIES: A DAINTY CAVE 65 TOUCH-ME-NOT 66 EARDROPS 71 LADY’S SLIPPER 72 THE HUMMING BIRD 74 PELARGONIUM STORIES: THE PELARGONIUMS 75 AN AFRICAN 80 PELARGONIUM LEAVES 81 THE GERANIUM FAMILY 84

HYACINTH STORIES 93 THE HYACINTH 95 SIGNS OF SPRING 96 THE HYACINTH’S SCEPTRE 98 TUNICS 99 THE BEE 104

STORIES ABOUT ALL SORTS OF THINGS 105 NECTAR GUIDES 107 CELLS 108 POLLEN CELLS 120 THE POLLEN 127 THE ANTHERS 128 OVULE CELLS 129 CHLOROPHYLL 134 ROOT CELLS 144 SKIN CELLS 148 TUBE CELLS 162 STRENGTHENING CELLS 165 WE AND THE PLANT PEOPLE 168 WHAT ARE THE FLOWERS MADE OF 176 WHAT BECOMES OF THE FLOWERS 181 NOTHING BUT LEAVES 191 SIGNS OF OTHER TIMES 214 WHY ARE THE FLOWERS SO LARGE AND BRIGHT 218 HOW MOTHER NATURE MAKES NEW FLOWERS 223 TONGUES AND TUBES 231

Morning-Glory Stories.

THE FLOWER.

The morning-glory and the bracted bindweed might be taken for sisters, they look so much alike. There is no doubt but that they are closely related, although the bindweed grows wild and the morning-glory has to be sown by us.

The bindweed lives in the country and twines over the hedges by the roadside; you can see its pink-and-white flowers all summer long if you look in the right places.

It is a jolly sort of life the bindweed leads, always twining, twining, twining, with its leaves facing the sunshine and its flowers dancing on their slender stems.

We often call the bindweed the wild morning-glory, and we and the bees are fond of it. We enjoy looking at it, and probably the bees do, too, though they have yet another reason for liking it. Just watch one go into a wild morning-glory some fine day. You will think she expects to find something very delightful indeed from the way she hurries in. And so she does. She buzzes down the white line to the very bottom of the flower, crowds her head as far in as she can get it, and then thrusts her long brown tongue yet deeper in to where the honey lies. For the flower makes honey for the bee, and keeps it hidden as deep as possible. There are five openings in the bottom of the flower cup that go straight into the honey wells. You need only look into a morning-glory and you will see them. All kinds of morning-glories, as well as the bindweeds, have them.

The bees know this, and wherever you see the morning-glories you will see their little winged friends.

Very many flowers provide honey for the insects, and it is fortunate for us that they do; for if they did not, we should see no butterflies and have no honey, for butterflies and bees cannot live without the honey the flowers give them.

Flower honey has a special name; we often call it nectar, for a good reason which I mean to tell you another time.

The places where the nectar is stored are the nectar holders, or nectaries.

It must be a fine thing to go to a flower and take a drink of honey whenever you wish; but what will you say when I tell you the bees get bread as well as honey from the flowers?

Yet this is what happens. You could not live upon honey alone; neither could a bee. Perhaps you could not live upon bread and honey; but you could if you were a bee, that is, beebread and honey.

For beebread is much more nutritious than the bread we eat. In fact, it takes the place of meat and eggs and milk and all the other things we take such pains to get.

You do not see where a bee finds bread in a flower?

That is because you are not a bee. If you were, you would know at once.

Suppose you watch a bee go into a morning-glory.

She will be in a great hurry, and you will have to keep your eyes open, or all will be over before you know what has happened.

She will suck up the honey, and then very likely she will turn around and around on the white pole-like part that stands up in the middle of the flower. She is not doing this for fun, nor because she is confused and does not know which way to go next.

She is gathering fine flour of which to make beebread.

Put your finger into the morning-glory and you, too, may gather this fine flour.

When you take your finger out there will be something like fine white powder clinging to it. Well, that is the flour from which the bee makes her beebread. We call it pollen, and if we look closely we shall find it is stored in five tiny boxes.

These boxes, which are called anthers, open by a slit along one side, and the bee puts her funny little feet into the slits and scrapes out the pollen, which she moistens with honey and packs into baskets on her hindermost legs, or fastens to the hairs on the under side of her body.

Then she goes home and packs her load away in the hive for future use.

You see it is not much trouble to make beebread—that is, if you know how. It does not have to be raised or baked, yet I doubt if you or I would be able to make it so that a bee would consider it fit to eat.

These anthers are held up on long white stalks which grow to the inside of the flower cup, and which are named filaments.

Since there are five anthers there are five filaments.

We call the whole thing, anther and filament, a stamen.

But this is not all there is to be found in a morning-glory flower. There is something else, and if it were not for this something else we should not have the fun of learning about honey and stamens, because there would be none! Both honey and stamens exist because of this something else.

It is in the very center of the flower, and the stamens stand about it in a circle. It stands up like a pole and has a knob at the top. The knob sticks out above the stamens as a rule. When the flower cup falls, the stamens fall too, because the filaments grow fast to it. But this something else does not fall. It stays on the vine, and you can see it better after the flower cup has fallen.

We call it the pistil. It has neither honey nor pollen, yet on its account the bees and butterflies visit the flowers.