Identifier: flowerbeeplant00love (find matches)
Title: The flower and the bee; plant life and pollination
Year: 1918 (1910s)
Authors: Lovell, John Harvey, 1860-1939
Subjects: Fertilization of plants
Publisher: New York, C. Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden
Digitizing Sponsor: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden

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. 20.) This is doubtless the reason why manyspecies produce, besides their showy blossoms, small greenflowers (cleistogamy flowers), w^hich never expand but are veryfruitful. The beautiful and richly variegated varieties of the pansy(Viola tricolor) have been produced partly by selection andpartly by hybridization. The corolla may be pure white,yellow, red, blue, purple, or black, or there may be manifoldcombinations of these hues. (Fig. 21.) These striking diversi-ties result from various mixtures and modifications of two pig-ments contained in the epidermis—violet-colored sap andyellow granules. In the pansy the spur at the base of thelower petal contains the nectar. The anthers lie close together,forming a cone, into the centre of which is shed the dry pollen; 48 BEES AS BUILDERS OF FLOWERS and directly in front of this cone stands the stigma, on the lowerside of which there is a flexible, lip-like projection. To reachthe nectar a bee must run its tongue through the centre of the
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Fig. 20. Blue Violet. Viola cnmiUata A bee-flower; the veins on the lower petal serve as nectar-guides; the spur, or nectary, isshown in the two lower flowers cone of anthers; and when it is withdrawn the grains of pollencling to its moistened surface, while the lip of the stigma bendsit away so that self-pollination is prevented. But when theproboscis is inserted in another flower a portion of the pollen 49 THE FLOWER AND THE BEE is lodged on a receptive part of the stigma, where it soon germi-nates. The pea (Fig. 22), bean, clovers, locust, vetch, alfalfa, and ahost of leguminous allies, are grouped together in the pea family,or Papilionacece—a name derived from the Greek word forbutterfly, because of a fancied resemblance of the flowers tothat insect. Most of the 5,000 described species are bee-flowers, although there are a few bird and butterfly flowers,and at least 13 species are known which, in the absence ofbees, are infertile. For the most part 9 of the 10 stamensunite to fo

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