526 



Handbook of Nature-Study 



look carefully at this bowl, we find two openings besides the main one ; 

 these two are near the stem, and their edges are not incurved. Extending 

 out into each of these openings is a strange little round object, which is 

 an anther; but if we try to get pollen from this anther with a pencil or a 

 knife we get, instead of powdery pollen, a smear that sticks to what it 

 touches, like melted rubber or gum. The secret of this is, that the lower 

 side of the anther is gummy, and adheres to whatever touches it and 

 brings with it, when pulled away, the mealy pollen which lies loose above 

 it. Another strange thing is that, if this lower part of the anther is not 

 carried away, it seems to partially harden and opens downward, letting 

 the pollen escape in a way usual with other flowers. We have to remove 

 a side of the bowl to see the stigma; it is fan-shaped, and is bent at right 

 angles to the flower stem; and above it, as if to protect it, is a stiff tri- 

 angular piece which is really a strangely modified stamen. I think one 

 reason why the lady's slipper always is called "she" is because of this 

 tendency on her part to divert an object from its natural use. Surely a 

 hairpin used for a paper knife or a monkey-wrench for a hammer, is not 

 nearly so feminine a diversion as a stamen grown wide and long to make 

 an awning above a stigma. 



The general color of the flower is yellow, and there are some seductive 

 dark red spots on the stamen-awning and along the folded-in surface of 



the petal-sac which say plainly, 

 "Come here, Madam Mining-bee, 

 and see what these spots mean." 

 And the little bee alights on the 

 flower and soon crawls into the 

 well at the center, the recurved 

 edges preventing it from return- 

 ing by the same door. At the 

 bottom of the sac there are delec- 

 table vegetable hairs to be 

 browsed upon ; if there is nectar, 

 I have never been able to detect 

 it with my coarse organs of taste ; 

 and Mr. Eugene Barker who has 

 examined hundreds of the flowers 

 has not been able to detect the 

 presence of nectar in them at any 

 stage ; but he made no histologi- 

 cal study of the glands. 



After a satisfying meal the 

 bee, which is a lively crawler, 

 seeks to get out where it sees the 

 light shining through one of the openings near to the stem. In doing this, 

 she presses her head and back, first against the projecting stigma and 

 then against the sticky anther, which smears he with a queer kind of 

 plaster; and it sticks there until she brushes it off on the stigma of 

 another flower, when crowding past it; and there she again becomes 

 smeared with pollen plaster from this flower's anthers. Mr. Barker, who 

 has especially studied these flowers, has found that the little mining bees 

 of the genus Andrena were the most frequent visitors; he also found 

 honey-bees and one stray young grasshopper in the sacs. The mining 



Detail of yellow lady's slipper. 



1, /, leaf; s,s. sepals; p.p. petals; p.s, petal-sac. 

 2, Side-view: ac, a>ilhcr coi>er; p.s, petal-sac, 

 a, anther. The arrow shows the path of the 

 insect. 3, an, anther closed; o. anther open. 



