THE WILD CAMOMILE 



stigmas of the lowest florets of the next daisy 

 bloom it visits ; for the bee generally keeps to one 

 kind of nectar on each of its journeys, although 

 occasionally it may suddenly find attractions 

 elsewhere. In such cases, however, the pollen 

 conveyed usually has no effect unless the species 

 visited is nearly related, when the seeds may 

 produce a hybrid form. 



I think the meaning of the central yellow mass 

 of the camomile daisy will now be understood 

 and if such daisy blooms be looked at closely the 

 successive stages of unopened, opening, and opened 

 flowers may be seen by the observer. This, too, 

 explains why daisies are so lasting as cut ^'flowers" 

 — the blossom lasts while the numerous florets have 

 time to open and develop. 



There still remain, however, the white outer 

 florets. What of these ? Well, when the daisies 

 adopted this method of dwarfing and crowding 

 their flowers together, although they attained the 

 desired end of rapid pollination by insect agency, 

 yet they necessarily did away with large showy 

 petals, which was a somewhat serious loss, for this 

 convenient arrangement certainly needed attraction 

 for the insects for which it was designed. The 

 problem was solved, though, by specialising the 

 outermost row of florets. That specialisation 

 consisted in suppressing their stamens entirely, 

 leaving them with an ovary only, and then the 

 energy which would have been required for 

 building their stamens and pollen was directed 

 into producing a one-sided development of their 



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