THE DAFFODIL 



evolution adopted by these highest of the trinary 

 flowers while attaining their complexity, or at least 

 it helps us to understand how their complex details 

 could have evolved from the primitive flowers of 

 their lily-like ancestors. 



On account of its large entrance tube, or crown, 

 the daffodil becomes a highly specialised individual 

 of its group. In the case of the garden narcissus, 

 it will be remembered that the crown is small and 

 edged with red and orange colour, which features 

 make the flower more attractive to insects and 

 more readily guide them to w^here the nectar is 

 stored. The daffodil's tube, however, is large and 

 almost exactly fits the body of the humble-bee 

 which visits it ; and as the stamens shed their pollen 

 from their sides facing the ovary, the bee cannot 

 move between them and the ovary, as it seeks the 

 nectar, without its legs and body becoming more 

 or less completely dusted w^ith the pollen. 



Seeing that the pistil occupies a central position 

 with its stigma just above the mouth of the tube 

 and higher than the stamens, the bee is almost 

 certain to convey to the stigma pollen from a 

 neighbouring flower, as it alights upon it to enter 

 the blossom. 



When seeking nectar inside the flower, the bee 

 is well below the stigma, and in making its way 

 out it scrambles amongst the stamens lining the 

 inside of the tube, and so accumulates a store of 

 pollen about its legs and body to deposit upon the 

 stigma of the next blossom it visits. 



The tube or crown of the daffodil, therefore, 



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