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
Its range is from Maine to the Carolinas, westward to Minnesota
and Tennessee. A well-conducted Turk's cap is not bell-shaped at
maturity, like the Canada lily: it should open much farther,
until the six points of its perianth curve so far backward beyond
the middle as to expose the stamens for nearly their entire
length. One of the purple-dotted divisions of the flower when
spread out flat may measure anywhere from two and a half to four
inches in length. Smooth, lance-shaped leaves, tapering at both
ends, occur in whorls of threes to eights up the stem, or the
upper ones may be alternate. Abundant food, hidden in a round,
white-shingled storehouse under ground, nourishes the plant, and
similarly its bulb-bearing kin, when emergency may require - a
thrifty arrangement that serves them in good stead during
prolonged drought and severe winters.
Why, one may ask, are some lilies radiantly colored and speckled;
others, like the Easter lily, deep chaliced, white, spotless?
Now, in all our lily kin nectar is secreted in a groove at the
base of each of the six divisions of the flower, and upon its
removal by that insect best adapted to come in contact with
anthers and stigma as it flies from lily to lily depends all hope
of perpetuating the lovely race. For countless ages it has been
the flower's business to find what best pleased the visitors on
whom so much depended. Some lilies decided to woo one class of
insects; some, another. Those which literally set their caps for
color-loving bees and butterflies whose long tongues could easily
drain nectar deeply hidden from the mob for their special
benefit, assumed gay hues, speckling the inner side of their
spreading divisions, even providing lines as pathfinders to their
nectaries in some cases, lest a visitor try to thrust in his
tongue between the petal-like parts while standing on the
outside, and so defeat their well-laid plan. It is almost
pathetic to see how bright and spotted they are inside, that the
visitor may not go astray. Thus we find the chief pollenizers of
the Canada and the Turk's cap lilies to be specialized bees, the
interesting upholsterers, or 1eaf-cutters, conspicuous among the
throng. Nectar they want, of course; but the dark, rich pollen is
needed also to mix with it for the food supply of a generation
still unborn. Anyone who has smelled a lily knows how his nose
looks afterward. The bees have no difficulty whatever in removing
lily pollen and transferring it. So much for the colored lilies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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