282 The Romance of Wild Flowers 
is produced by the base of the ovary, and retained in 
the lower part of the long corolla-tube. Both anthers 
and stigma mature together, but one of the lobes 
of the stigma hangs down between and below the 
anthers so that it comes first into contact with the 
back of a bee. The flowers are great favourites with 
bees, so that cross-fertilisation is no doubt the rule; 
but those with tongues less than three-eighths of an 
inch long cannot reach the honey. 
The plant frequently grows among Stinging Nettles 
or in similar situations, and there can be little doubt 
that natural selection has produced the likeness to 
Urtica, by preserving the plants that most nearly 
resembled the Nettle from those mammals and insects 
to whom the stinging powers of Urtica are objection- 
able. To human eyes the difference in the two species 
is very marked when the flowers are present, but 
when these are absent it would take a very sharp- 
eyed botanist to detect a Lamium growing in a clump 
of Urtica unless he were at very close range. Small 
insects could easily creep down the tube and steal the 
honey, but a ring of hairs above the honey prevents 
a successful termination to the enterprise ; the Ground 
Humble-bee, however, whose tongue is too short to 
reach the nectar legitimately, bites a hole through 
the tube, and other short-tongued species make use 
of the same opening. 
The Yellow Archangel (L. galeobdolon) is, like 
White Dead - nettle, a perennial species, growing 
more in the copse and hedgerow. Its arrangements 
are broadly similar to those of its white relation, but 
the upper lip is so narrowed to the base that it appears 
to be stalked. 
