cc;6 Handbook of Xature-Study 



flowers in each family which wave yellow banners to all the insects that 

 pass by and signal them with a code of their own, thus: 'Here, right 

 this way is a flower family that needs a bee or a beetle or an insect of 

 some sort to bring it pollen from abroad, so that it can ripen its seed ; and 

 it will give nectar and plenty of pollen in exchange.' Of course, if the 

 flowers could walk around like people, or fly like insects, they could 

 fetch and carry their own pollen, but as it is, they have to depend 

 upon insect messengers to do this for them. Let us see who of us will be 

 the first to guess w r hat the name of this golden city is, and who will be 

 the first to find it." 



A street in goldcnrod city. 



The children were delighted with this riddle and soon found the golden- 

 rod city. We examined each little house with its ornate, green "shingles." 

 These little houses, looking like cups, were arranged on the street stem, 

 right side up, in an orderly manner and very close together; and where 

 each joined the stem, there was a little, green bract for a doorstep. 

 Living on these houses we found the flower families, each consisting of a 

 few tubular disk-flowers opening out like bells, and coming from their 

 centers were the long pollen-tubes or the yellow, two-parted stigmas. 

 The ray-flowers had short but brilliant banners; and they, as well as the 

 disk-flowers, had young seeds with pretty fringed pappus developing upon 

 them. The banner-flowers were not set so regularly around the edges as 

 in the asters ; but the families were such close neighbors, that the banners 

 reached from one house to another. And all of the families on all of the 

 little, green streets were signalling insects, and one boy said, "They must 

 be making a very loud yellow noise." We found that (very many 

 insects had responded to this call honeybees, bumblebees, mining and 

 carpenter bees, blue-black blister beetles with short wings and awkward 

 bodies, beautiful golden-green chalcid flies, soldier beetles and many 

 others ; and we found the spherical gall and the spindle-shaped gall in the 

 stems, and the strange gall up near the top which grew among the leaves. 



Unless one is a trained botanist it is wasted energy to try to distinguish 

 any but the well-marked species of goldenrod ; for, according to Gray, we 

 have 56 species, the account of which makes twelve pages of most unin- 

 teresting reading in the new Manual. The goldenrod family is not in the 

 least cliquish, the species have a habit of interbreeding to the confusion of 

 the systematic botanist. Matthew's Field Book serves as well as any for 

 distinguishing the well-marked species. 



