It is incorrect to speak of so many flowers as one; and whenever we say, “This is a clover blossom,” really we ought to say, “These are clover blossoms.” We might just as well take a lock of hair—a lock made up of ever so many hairs—and say, “This is a hair.” Now, you all know it would not be correct to do this, and no more is it correct to call a bunch of clover blossoms “a blossom.” But as most people do not understand this, undoubtedly the mistake will continue to be made. Fig. 260 shows you one little flower taken out of the ball-like clover head. Can you think of any good reason why so many of these little flowers should be crowded together in a head? What would happen if each little blossom grew quite alone? [Illustration: FIG. 260] Why, it would look so small that the bee could hardly see it. And sweetly though the whole clover head smells, the fragrance of a single flower would be so slight that it would hardly serve as an invitation to step in for refreshments. So it would seem that the clover plant does wisely in making one good-sized bunch out of many tiny flowers, for in this way the bees are persuaded to carry their pollen from one blossom to another. The moral of the clover story is this: Be very careful before you insist that you hold in your hand or see in the picture only one flower. [Illustration: Decoration] MORE TRICKS Can you think of any other flowers that deceive us as the clover does? Early in May we see in the woods a tree that is very beautiful. It is covered with what seem to be white blossoms. This tree is the flowering dogwood, and it tricks us somewhat in the same way as does the clover; for in this picture (Fig. 261) you see what nearly every one believes to be a single flower of the dogwood. And if some time ago you had been asked to give the building plan of the dogwood flower, you would have been pretty sure to say that the four large white leaves formed its corolla. [Illustration: FIG. 261] Here you would have been quite mistaken; for instead of one large flower, the picture shows you a number of tiny blossoms, so closely packed, and so surrounded by the four white leaves, that they look like only one blossom. Try to get a branch from the dogwood tree (only be sure to break it off where it will not be missed), and pull apart what looks so much like one large flower. First pull off the four white leaves. Then you will have left a bunch of tiny greenish blossoms. Look at one of these through a magnifying glass. If eyes and glass are both good, you will see a very small calyx, a corolla made up of four little flower leaves, four mites of stamens, and a tiny pistil,—a perfect little flower where you never would have guessed it. But all by themselves they would never be noticed: so a number of them club together, surrounding themselves with the showy leaves which light up our spring woods. In Fig. 262 you see the flower cluster of the hobblebush.