80 The Romance of Wild Flowers 
from the same flower, for the stamens stand erectly 
round the pistil, and form a more convenient alighting- 
stage for flying insects than the soft petals. The 
fertile ovary lengthens into a seed-vessel called a 
silique, which attains in this species to the extra- 
ordinary length of a foot,—three or four times the 
diameter of the expanded flower,—and opens from 
the top by two valves almost as long. 
The Greater Celandine, or Swallow-wort (Cheli- 
doniwm majus), is another yellow-flowered Poppy- 
wort, which grows along hedge-banks and in all sorts 
of waste corners. Its thin leaves are much divided 
pinnately, and present a very different appearance 
from those of the Horned Poppy. The flower-stalks, 
too, instead of ending in one large flower, bear a 
cluster of four or five small ones. These are not more 
than an inch across, each with a slender little foot- 
stalk of similar length, and as these all radiate from 
a common centre they form an umbel. 
The flowers do not secrete honey, consequently the 
only insects that visit them are the pollen-seekers, 
though several of these are humble-bees that ordinarily 
look for honey also,—such as the Field Humble-bees 
(Bombus pratorum and B. agrorum), as well as B. 
rajellus and several species of Halictus. These alight 
upon the stamens and stigma in the centre of the 
flower, and as the stigina is taller than the anthers, 
there is considerable chance of cross-fertilisation in 
all these cases; but with the humble-bees it is certain, 
because these make straight for the stigmas. The 
fruit is similar to that of the Horned Poppy, but only 
an inch and a half in length, one-celled, and the 
valves open from the bottom upwards. 
