From Blue to Purple 



How dainty, slender, tempting these little flowers are! One gladly 

 risks a watery grave or broken bones to bring down a bunch 

 from its aerial cranny. 



It was a long stride forward in the evolutionary scale when 

 the harebell welded its five once separate petals together; first at 

 the base, then farther and farther up the sides, until a solid bell- 

 shaped structure resulted. This arrangement which makes insect 

 fertilization a more certain process because none of the pollen is 

 lost through apertures, and because the visitor must enter the 

 flower only at the vital point where the stigmas come in contact 

 with his pollen-laden body, has given to all the flowers that have 

 attained to it, marked ascendency. 



Like most inverted blossoms, the harebell hangs its head to 

 protect its nectar and pollen, not only from rain, but from the in- 

 trusion of undesirable crawling insects which would simply brush 

 off its pollen in the grass before reaching the pistil of another 

 flower, and so defeat cross-fertilization, the end and aim of so 

 many blossoms. Advertising for winged insects by its bright 

 color, the harebell attracts bees, butterflies, and many others. 

 These visitors cannot well walk on the upright petals, and sooner or 

 later must clasp the pistil if they would secure the nectar secreted 

 at the base. In doing so, they will dust themselves and the imma- 

 ture pistil with the pollen from the surrounding anthers ; but a 

 newly opened flower is incapable of fertilization. The pollen, 

 although partially discharged in the unopened bud, is prevented 

 from falling out by a coat of hairs on the upper part of the style. 

 By the time all the pollen has been removed by visitors, however, 

 and the stamens which matured early have withered, the pistil 

 has grown longer, until it looks like the clapper in a bell; the 

 stigma at its top has separated into three horizontal lobes which, 

 being sticky on the under side, a pollen-laden insect on entering 

 the bell must certainly brush against them and render them 

 fertile. But humblebees, its chief benefactors, and others may 

 not have done their duty by the flower; what then ? Why, the 

 stigmas in that case finally bend backward to reach the left-over 

 pollen, and fertilize themselves, obviously the next best thing for 

 them to do. How one's reverence increases when one begins to 

 understand, be it ever so little of, the divine plan ! 



" Probably the most striking blue and purple wild flowers 

 we have," says John Burroughs, "are of European origin. These 

 colors, except with the fall asters and gentians, seem rather un- 

 stable in our flora." This theory is certainly borne out in the 

 case of the Rampion, European, or Creeping Bellflower (C. rapun- 

 culoides), now detected in the act of escaping from gardens from 

 New Brunswick to Ontario, Southern New York, Pennsylvania, 

 and Ohio, and making itself very much at home in our fields and 

 along the waysides. Compared with the delicate little harebell, it is 



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