494 



Handbook of Nature-Study 



FLOWERS AND INSECT PARTNERS 



T is undoubtedly true that while the processes of 

 cross-pollcnation and the complicated devices of 

 flowers for insuring it can only be well taught to 

 older pupils and only fully understood in the college 

 laboratory, yet there are a few simple facts which 

 even the young child may know, as follows: 

 i. Pollen is needed to make the seeds grow; some 

 flowers need the pollen from other flowers of the 

 same kind, to make their seeds grow; but many 

 flowers also use the pollen from their own flowers to 

 pollenate their ovules, which grow into seeds. 



2. Flowers have neither legs like animals nor wings like butterflies, to 

 go after pollen ; so they give insects nectar to drink and pollen to eat, and 

 thus pay them for fetching and carrying the pollen. 



I taught this to a four-year-old once in the following manner : A pine 

 tree in the yard was sifting its pollen over us and little Jack asked what 

 the yellow dust was; we went to the tree and saw where it came from, 

 then I found a tiny young cone and explained to him that this was a pine 

 blossom, and that in order to become a cone with seeds, it must have some 

 pollen fall upon it; and we saw how the wind sifted the pollen over it and 

 then we examined a ripe cone and found the seeds. Then we looked at 

 the clovers in the lawn. They did not have so much pollen and they were 

 so low in the grass that the wind could not carry it for them ; but right 

 there was a bee. What was she doing? She was getting honey for her 

 hive or pollen for her brood, and she went from one clover head to 

 another; we caught her in a glass fruit jar, and found she was dusted with 

 pollen and that she had pollen packed in the baskets on her hind legs ; and 

 we concluded that she carried plenty of pollen on her clothes for the 

 clovers, and that the pollen in her baskets was for her own use. After 

 that he was always watching the bees at work ; and we found afterwards 

 that flowers had two ways of telling the insects that they wanted pollen. 

 One was by their color, for the dandelions and clovers hide their colors 

 during dark, rainy days when the bees remain in their hives. Then we 

 found the bees working on mignonette, whose blossoms were so small that 

 Jack did not think they were blossoms at all, and we concluded that the 

 mignonette called the bees by its fragrance. We found other flowers 

 which called with both color and fragrance; and this insect-flower 

 partnership remained a factor of great interest in the child's mind ever 

 after. 



"Roly-poly honey-bee, 

 Humming in the clover, 

 Under you the tossing leaves, 

 And the blue sky over, 

 Why are you so busy, pray? 

 Never still a minute, 

 Hovering now above a flower, 

 Now half buried in it !" 



-JULIA C. R. DORR. 



