50 FLOWERS OF THE WOODS AND COPSES 



The small flowers are white in terminal loose racemes, with a 

 hairy calyx, and petals equalling them in length, blunt, with a median 

 point and spreading. The stigrna is bright red. The ovary is inferior 

 or below the perianth. The fruit or capsule is pear-shaped, persistent, 

 with hooked bristles, borne on flower-stalks turned back when ripe. 



The Enchanter's Nightshade is about i foot in height usually. 

 Flowers are in bloom from June to August. The plant is perennial, 

 and reproduces by division. 



The flowers are small and contain honey. There are only two 

 stamens. The Enchanter's Nightshade is pollinated very much in the 

 same way as Veronica Ckamcedrys. A single style projects, with the 

 stamens spreading away from the centre of the corolla, which is erect. 

 Together they form with the stamens a platform by which insects 

 may reach the abundant honey secreted by the fleshy ring surrounding 

 the style. The latter stands lower than the stamens, slightly forward, 

 and forms a resting-place. When an insect settles it touches the 

 stigmatic knobs at the end with its abdomen. It stretches across the 

 stamens, and grasps the anthers, which are at first distant but are 

 drawn down, so that the insect's fore feet are dusted by the pollen from 

 them. If the insect alights on one of the stamens as it bends down, 

 it grasps the base of the stamen and style at their base with its 

 fore feet, and if the style touches the ventral surface with the stigma 

 it touches the side opposite that which the anther touches at the same 

 time. Thus the plant is cross-pollinated if the insect has come from 

 another flower. 



The flowers wither rapidly, unless self-pollination follows in the 

 absence of insects, as it may do when the stamens bend over and 

 touch the stigma. The plant is visited by Baccha elongata, Ascia 

 podagrica, Melanostoma mellina, Anthomyia, and other Musciclae and 

 Syrphidae, as well as by Musca domestica. 



The single-seeded fruits catch in the coats of animals or passers- 

 by, and are thus dispersed. 



Enchanter's Nightshade is a humus-loving plant requiring an 

 ordinary humus soil, such as that to be found in a wood, or under 

 a hedgebank, or in a shrubbery. 



The two fungi Melampsora circtecz and Puccinia circles attack it. 

 The beetles Graptidera oleracea, Psylliodes chalcomera, the Hymen- 

 opterous insect Tenthredo colon, the Lepidoptera, Elephant Hawk 

 Moth, Chcerocampa elpenor, Asychna terminella, Anybia langiella, 

 and the Hemipterous insect Metatropis rufescens feed upon En- 

 chanter's Nightshade in some shape or form. 



