MILKWEED FAMILY 



''Between the hoods, at the point where the edges 

 of the stamen disk lie together is a narrow notch. 

 There are five of these in each blossom. The bee, of 

 course, seeks the nectar at the centre of the flower, 

 but this droops on a yielding pedicel so that she must 

 continually struggle to keep her place, with the result 

 that she slips and slides, and finally, perhaps, a foot 

 slips into one of these notches. The bee draws up her 

 leg in the effort to escape and her foot catches here. 

 If she is strong enough she pulls it out and pulls with 

 it two tiny club-shaped masses which cling to her leg. 

 After the fashion of bees, she goes to another Milk- 

 weed blossom and deposits the pollen mass there. 

 The entire arrangement is extremely intricate, and not 

 extremely successful, for many flowers fail of fertiliza- 

 tion. Many insects, flies, bees, wasps, and butter- 

 flies come to the Milkweed feast, but only bees seem 

 able to polHnate the flower. If one compares the 

 number of blossoms of a Milkweed stem wdth the num- 

 ber of pods it bears, it becomes apparent that but 

 very few indeed of the blossoms achieve fertilization." 



Anna B. Comstock, writing of Milkweeds, says: 

 "To open a Milkweed pod is a joy and a delight. 

 Take a pod still green, though full grown, open by 

 pulling apart along the seam, this is not a seam with a 

 raw edge, but is furnished with a perfect selvage. Be- 

 low the opening is a line of white velvet, at one end, 

 and with their heads all in one direction, are the 

 beautiful pale-rimmed, brown, overlapping seeds, and 

 at the other end we see the exquisite Milkweed silk 

 with the skein so polished that no reel could give us 

 a thread of such lustre. If we remove the contents of 

 the pod as a whole we see that the velvety portion is 



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