The book of wonders : $b gives plain and simple answers to the thousands of everyday questions that are asked and which all should be able to, but cannot answer...
Science
The book of wonders : $b gives plain and simple answers to the thousands of everyday questions that are asked and which all should be able to, but cannot answer...
Curiosities and wonders; Encyclopedias and dictionaries; Questions and answers; Science -- Miscellanea; Technology -- Miscellanea
Naturally, the nearest male plant to a female plant may be quite some
distance off. How, then, is the pollen from the male plant to mix with
the pollen of the female plant? In some cases it is the wind which
blows the pollen powder from one to the other, and this thus leaves the
development of a perfect seed from a perfect flower open to chance. In
the case of perfumed flowers, however, which are mostly low-growing
plants, the wind cannot be depended upon. So nature gives to such
plants the power to make the perfumed oil and the busy bee does the
rest. The perfume being a flying oil rises up into the air and attracts
the bee. He is gathering honey and visits in turn all the flowers to
which he is attracted. He lights on a male flower and gathers in his
honey, and incidentally acquires on his legs, without intending to do
so, some of the pollen of the male flower. Then he flies about to the
next flower, and to others, and sooner or later he will come across a
female flower of the same kind as that from which he secured the pollen
on his legs. When he thus enters the female flower, the pollen on his
legs mixes with the pollen of the same kind of the female flower, and
quite unintentionally the bee helps thus to make the perfect seed. It
is not a part of a bee’s business to do this carrying. It only happens
that he does this in connection with his regular business of gathering
honey. It is a wonderful thing which may be noted here that the pollen
from a male of any flower will not mix with the pollen of the female of
any other kind of flower, but that the same kinds only have attractions
for each other. Flowers are given these attractive perfumes in order
that they may attract the bees and other insects in this way. The
plants or flowers which grow closest to the ground have generally the
strongest and most far-reaching smells. This is so that they will not
be overlooked.
Why Are Leaves Not All the Same Shape?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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