NOTES ON POLLINATION. 17 



fitjgiaas mature later tliati the anthers and the style is usually 

 longer than the stamens, but it varies in length, and self-pollination 

 is sometimes possible. The flowers I collected in Bear Valley were 

 from six to nine lines long, and the honey, sometimes two lines deep 

 in the tube, seemed to be accessible to large bees. In July I found 

 this species and G. virgata flowering in close proximit}^ and bees 

 were visiting both species without discriminating, the small bees for 

 pollen, the larger apparently for honey. I found no hybrids, however. 

 Earlier in the season I had decided that the honey of G. densifolia, 

 growing in the San Fernando Valley, was too deep for bees, the 

 flowers I)eing visited only by Rhaphiomiflas Acton, Coq. 



GiLiA TENUiFLORA, Benth., is very abundant in the mountains 

 in June and July. I have seen the plants three feet high and the 

 flowers one and one-fourth inches long, but the plants under my 

 daily observation in Bear Valley were much smaller. The flowers 

 are very brightly colored, and conspicuous, but they provide very 

 little, if any, honey, and I have never seen them visited except 

 casually by a fly or a bee after pollen. The flowers, like many 

 other Gilias, are open only from 8 or 9 A. M. to 3 or 4 P. M., and 

 have the usual Gilia habit of maturing exserted stigmas later than 

 the widely-opened anthers. I think the flowers of this species are 

 mainly pollinated by the anthers striking the stigmas as the corollas 

 fall ofl". 



Gilia micrantha, Steud. In tiiis locality the flowers of this 

 species are an inch or more long and are usually white with a 

 yellow throat. They are distinctly heterostyled. The hundreds of 

 plants I noted divided themselves about equally into two groups, 

 those with stigmas quite beyond the anthers and those with stigmas 

 in the throat below the anthers. But the anthers were always in 

 the same position, just above the throat. The anthers are small, and, 

 like the anthers of other Gilias, become little pollen -covered balls 

 because of widely opened cells. I have never seen the flowers 

 visited, but they provide considerable honey and remain open at 

 night, closing only in bad weather. The Gilia in the vicinity of 

 Los Angeles, which is commonly called micrantha, has its stigmas 

 always considerably beyond the anthers, provides little, if any, honey, 

 and closes about 4 p. m. 



