194 AMERICAN HONEY PLANTS 



'The nectar flows all day. The honey is amber in color, sometimes 

 light green and of a mild aromatic flavor. Cows fed on it show a 

 marked increase in flow of milk, but will not eat it alone at first." — 

 Harry E. Home, page 342 of above book. 



This species was introduced into Germany and had quite a boom 

 there in the early nineties. Much attention was given it in the German 

 bee magazines and it was endorsed as valuable both for forage and for bee 

 pasturage. 



Scholl lists Phacelia congesta and Phacelia glabra as yielding spar-, 

 ingly in Texas. Thos. Wm. Cowan writes as follows, in American Bee 

 Journal, in regard to the growing of phacelia in Europe: 



"The one grown in Europe, Phacelia tanacetifolia, is literally 

 covered with bees from morning till night. The species was intro- 

 duced into Europe from California in 1832, and is called tanacetifolia 

 (tansy-leaved) from the resemblance of its leaves to those of tansy. 

 It is an annual with bluish pink flowers, racemes spike-formed, 

 elongated, corymbose; height of plant two feet. It is grown in Europe 

 as a bee plant for its nectar, and is the only one which produces an 

 appreciable quantity of it." — November 20, 1902, page 751. 

 A beekeeper from Indiana reports that Phacelia purshii grows freely 

 in the wheat fields in his locality and that the bees work freely on the blue 

 flowers. He states that in places it grows so abundantly that the wheat 

 takes second place to the phacelia. On the 27th of May, 1919, strong colo- 

 nies already had full depth extracting supers almost filled. The honey 

 from this source is of good quality. 



PHYSIOLOGY OF NECTAR SECRETION. 



What we call individual plants are complex communities of real mi- 

 croscopic individuals, which biologists call cells. These are associated in 

 numerous sub-communities differing from one another in structure and 

 function. Their specialization results in a division of labor and a corre- 

 spondingly large total efficiency, much as specialization and division of 

 labor lead to efficiency and productive possibilities in a nation consisting 

 of states, and these of smaller communities made up of trades, guilds and 

 professions, which in co-operation follow the manifold activities that 

 characterize a nation and collectively constitute the national life of its in- 

 dividuals, which is far more effective and greater than the individual life 

 of any one person or class. 



The active, living part of a cell is its protoplasm — the physical basis 

 cf life, as Huxley called it in animals and plants alike. Commonly this 

 protoplasm encloses itself by a wall of cellulose, an organic substance 

 m.anufactured by the protoplasm. Where two cells are in contact, they 

 are usually flattened against one another. When men first began to use 

 the microscope, only a little over two centuries ago, it was the walls and 

 shapes of cells that attracted attention, and the resemblance to honey- 

 comb on a small scale was so striking that the cavities were naturally 

 called cells. 



Protoplasm itself is a very complex substance, chemically, and even 

 the much simpler cell-wall is far from being always really one identical 



