i 9 4 FLOWERS OF THE ROADSIDES AND HEDGES 



flowers are a delicate cream-colour, with wheel-shaped corolla. The 

 fruit is succulent, green at first then red. The flower-stalk is turned 

 back in fruit. 



The plant is rarely more than 6 in. high. It flowers in April and 

 May, and is perennial. 



The layer of honey is flat and exposed, so long-tongued insects are 

 discouraged ; the flowers are greenish-yellow like the rest of the plant. 

 The visitors are chiefly Diptera and Hymenoptera, attracted by the 

 musky smell. A fleshy ring at the base of the stamens contains the 



Photo. Dr. Somerville Hastings 



MOSCHATEL (Adoxa Moschatellina, L.) 



honey. The stamens, which mature at the same time, stand at the 

 same level as the stigma and split into two, and the pollen-covered 

 surfaces are turned upwards in the terminal and outwards in the 

 4 lateral flowers, those turned outwards turning inwards afterward. 

 Insects crawling over the flower touch both anthers and stigma with 

 their feet and tongues, and may cross-pollinate the plant as in the 

 Guelder Rose and Elder. The visitors are Diptera, Borborus\ 

 Hymenoptera, Eulophus\ Ichneumons, Pezomachiis\ Coleoptera, Apion. 



The fruits are succulent drupes, green or red, and may be eaten by 

 birds, but are often deposited around the parent plant by an automatic 

 geotropic movement of the flower-stalk after flowering, whereby the 

 fruit is hidden beneath the leaves. 



Moschatel is a clay-loving plant, loving a clay soil and some 

 humus in the shade of the woods or hedgerows. 



