Wild Flowers: An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect VisitorsBlanchan, Neltje
Science
Wild Flowers: An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors
Blanchan, Neltje
Wild flowers -- North America
Both the white and the yellow sweet clover put their leaves to
sleep at night in a remarkable manner: the three leaflets of each
leaf twist through an angle of 90 degrees, until one edge of each
vertical blade is uppermost. The two side leaflets, Darwin found,
always tend to face the north with their upper surface, one
facing north-northwest and the other north-northeast, while the
terminal leaflet escapes the chilling of its sensitive upper
surface through radiation by twisting to a vertical also, but
bending to either east or west, until it comes in contact with
the vertical upper surface of either of the side leaflets. Thus
the upper surface of the terminal and of at least one of the side
leaflets is sure to be well protected through the night; one is
"left out in the cold."
The dried branches of sweet clover will fill a room with
delightful fragrance; but they will not drive away flies, nor
protect woolens from the ravages of moths, as old women once
taught us to believe.
The ubiquitous WHITE or DUTCH CLOVER (Trifolium repens), whose
creeping branches send up solitary round heads of white or
pinkish flowers on erect, leafless stems, from May to December,
in fields, open waste land, and cultivated places throughout our
area, Europe, and Asia, devotes itself to wooing bees, since
these are the only insects that effect cross-fertilization
regularly, other visitors aiding it only occasionally. When nets
are stretched over these flowers to exclude insects, only
one-tenth the normal quantity of fertile seed is set. Therefore,
for the bee's benefit, does each little floret conceal nectar in
a tube so deep that small pilferers cannot reach it; but when a
honeybee, for example, depresses the keel of the papilionaceous
blossom, abundant reward awaits him in consideration of his
services in transferring pollen. After the floret which he has
been the means of fertilizing closes over its seed-vessel on his
departure, it gradually withers, grows brown, and hangs downward,
partly to indicate to the next bee that comes along which fords
in the head still contain nectar, and which are done for; partly
to hide the precious little vigorous green seed-pod in the center
of each withered, papery corolla from the visitation of certain
insects whose minute grubs destroy countless millions of the
progeny of less careful plants. Thus the erect florets in a head
stand awaiting their benefactors; those drooping around the outer
edge are engaged in the most serious business of life. Sometimes
a solitary old maid remains standing, looking anxiously for a
lover, at the end of the season. Usually all the florets are then
bent down around the stem in a brown and crumpled mass. But
however successfully the clover guards its seeds from
annihilation, its foliage is the favorite food of very many
species of caterpillars and of all grazing cattle the world
around. This is still another plant frequently miscalled
shamrock. Good luck or bad attends the finding of the leaves,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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