50 FLOWERS OF THE WOODS AND COPSES 
The small flowers are white in terminal loose racemes, with a 
hairy calyx, and petals equalling them in length, blunt, with a median 
point and spreading. The stigma is bright red. The ovary is inferior 
or below the perianth. The fruit or capsule is pear-shaped, persistent, 
with hooked bristles, borne on flower-stalks turned back when ripe. 
The Enchanter’s Nightshade is about 1 foot in height usually. 
Flowers are in bloom from June to August. The plant is perennial, 
and reproduces by division. 
The flowers are small and contain honey. There are only two 
stamens. The Enchanter’s Nightshade is pollinated very much in the 
same way as Veronica Chamedrys. A single style projects, with the 
stamens spreading away from the centre of the corolla, which is erect. 
Together they form with the stamens a platform by which insects 
may reach the abundant honey secreted by the fleshy ring surrounding 
the style. The latter stands lower than the stamens, slightly forward, 
and forms a resting-place. When an insect settles it touches the 
stigmatic knobs at the end with its abdomen. It stretches across the 
stamens, and grasps the anthers, which are at first distant but are 
drawn down, so that the insect’s fore feet are dusted by the pollen from 
them. If the insect alights on one of the stamens as it bends down, 
it grasps the base of the stamen and style at their base with its 
fore feet, and if the style touches the ventral surface with the stigma 
it touches the side opposite that which the anther touches at the same 
time. Thus the plant is cross-pollinated if the insect has come from 
another flower. 
The flowers wither rapidly, unless self-pollination follows in the 
absence of insects, as it may do when the stamens bend over and 
touch the stigma. The plant is visited by Baccha elongata, Ascia 
podagrica, Melanostoma mellina, Anthomyia, and other Muscidze and 
Syrphide, as well as by Musca domestica. 
The single-seeded fruits catch in the coats of animals or passers- 
by, and are thus dispersed. 
Enchanter’s Nightshade is a humus-loving plant requiring an 
ordinary humus soil, such as that to be found in a wood, or under 
a hedgebank, or in a shrubbery. 
The two fungi Aelampsora circee@ and Puccinia circe@ attack it. 
The beetles Graptedera oleracea, Psylliodes chalcomera, the Hymen- 
opterous insect TZenthredo colon, the Lepidoptera, Elephant Hawk 
Moth, Cherocampa elpenor, Asychna terminella, Anybia langiella, 
and the Hemipterous insect Metatropis rufescens feed upon En- 
chanter’s Nightshade in some shape or form. 
