188 TYPES OF BRITISH PLANTS 
hopeless problem. If any of my readers, by-the-by, can 
solve this or any other of my puzzles, or have others 
still of their own, I should be delighted to hear from 
them, and, when I can, explain the difficulty or add it 
to the many things I want to find out myself. 
The drawing of the flower will probably bring it to 
mind, if you do not know the name, and we will now 
see what happens when a bee comes to visit it. Re- 
member that the stamens are all 
crowded together in the boat- 
shaped pair of petals, with the 
pistil in the middle. As they 
shed their pollen, it is all stored 
up in front of them, in the bows, 
so to speak, and they are coiled 
up behind it. A bee comes and 
BIRD’S-FOOT TREFOIL. lights on the wings, and his 
weight presses them downwards 
and apart. But the wings, as you may remember, interlock 
with the keel, which is thus forced downward as well, 
and frees the stamens from control; they straighten out, 
and force some of the pollen in the bows of the boat 
right on to the bee sitting above. When the bee goes 
the keel springs up, and the stamens either go back 
again or curl away backwards, if they have finished 
shedding pollen, out of the way of the pistil. This 
pumping performance may happen several times, but 
when the pollen is cleared out of the way, and the bows 
clear, the pistil begins to grow, and the next time a 
bee sits on the wings the old leverage action allows the 
pistil to touch the body of the bee, and to have a chance 
of finding some other flower’s pollen upon it. — 
There is another point of great interest in the Bird’s- 
