200 The Romance of Wild Flowers 
The large lilac-flowered Field Scabious (Scabiosa 
arvensis), the Small Scabious (S. colwmbaria), and 
the Devil’s-bit (S. swccisa) are our native species. 
The first-named may be taken as a sample of the 
three. The head consists of about fifty flowers 
with four-lobed corollas, of which one 
lobe is larger than the others, and in- 
creasingly so as we proceed from the 
centre to the circumference. These 
0 corollas are of varying length, with wide 
funnel-like mouths, so that their honey . 
is accessible to short-tongued and long- 
tongued insects alike; it is  conse- 
quently a favourite flower with insects 
of many kinds—bees, flies, butterflies, 
moths, and beetles, who effect cross - fertilisation. 
Honey is poured out by the upper part of the 
ovary, and is protected by the hairy lining of 
the corolla-tube. The flowers develop gradually, so 
that the whole head offers attractions to insects for a 
considerable time, and they are able to come back to 
the same head day after day and tap fresh stores of 
honey. The anthers in each flower mature and shed 
their pollen one at a time, and after the last anther 
on the flower-head is emptied, the styles lengthen and 
the stigmas all mature simultaneously, so that a single 
insect that has got well dusted with pollen on an 
earlier flower-head could effectually cross-fertilise all 
the flowers on a later head. Some plants produce 
only flowers with aborted stamens. 
The flowers of the Teasel (Dipsacus sylvestris) are 
individually much like those of Scabious, but the head 
instead of being nearly flat is almost egg-shaped, and the 
if 
Field Scabious and 
Fruit 
