HOW FLOWERS CLUB TOGETHER. 1 39 



in ivy and garlic. A head, again, is a cluster in 

 which the individual flowers are set close on very 

 short stalks or none at all in a round ball or a 

 circle. Clover and scabious are excellent ex- 

 amples of this sort of co-operation. 



If you examine a head of common white Dutch 

 clover (Fig. 32, iii.), you will see for yourself that 

 it is not, as you might suppose, a single flower, 

 but a thick mass of small white pea-like blos- 

 soms, each on a stalk of its own, and each pro- 

 vided with calyx, corolla, stamens, and pistil. 

 They are fertilised by bees ; and as soon as the 

 bee has impregnated each blossom, it turns down 

 and closes over, so as to warn the future visitor 

 that he has nothing to expect there. The flowers 

 open from below and without, upward and in- 

 ward ; and there is always a broad line between 

 the rifled and fertilised flowers, which hang down 

 as if retired from business, and the fresh and up- 

 standing virgin blossoms, which court the bees 

 with their bright corollas. Sometimes you will 

 find a head of clover in which all the flowers save 

 one have already been fertilised ; and this one, a 

 solitary old maid as it were, stands up in the cen- 

 tre still waiting for the bees to come and ferti- 

 lise it. 



By far the most interesting form of head, how- 

 ever, is that which occurs in the daisy, the sun- 

 flower, the dandelion, and their allies, where the 

 club or co-operative society of united blossoms so 

 closely simulates a single flower as to be univer- 

 sally mistaken for one by all but botanical ob- 

 servers. To the world at large a daisy or a dahlia 

 is simply a flower ; in reality it is nothing of the 

 sort, but a city or community of distinct flowers, 

 differing widely from one another in structure 



