Yellow and Orange 



The Hairy Honeysuckle, or Rough Woodbine (L. hirsitta), 

 with a more northerly and westerly range, bears clusters of 

 flowers that are yellow on the outside, and orange within the 

 tube, the terminal clusters slightly elevated above a united pair of 

 dull green leaves that are softly hairy underneath. The slender 

 flower-tube is sticky outside to protect it from pilfering ants, and 

 the hairs at the base of the stamens serve to hide the nectar from 

 unbidden guests. Berries, bright orange. Flowering season, June 



deliciously fragrant Chinese or Japanese Honeysuckle (L. 

 Japonica), as commonly grown on garden trellises and fences 

 here as the morning-glory, has freely escaped from cultivation 

 from New York southward to West Virginia and North Carolina. 

 Everyone must be familiar with the pairs of slender, tubular, two- 

 lipped, white or pinkish flowers, quickly turning yellow, which 

 are borne in the leaf axils along the sprays. The smooth, dark 

 green, opposite leaves, pale beneath, cling almost the entire year 

 through. The stem, in winding, follows the course taken by the 

 hands of a clock. Were the berries red instead of black, they 

 would, doubtless, have attracted more birds to disperse their 

 seeds, and the vine would have travelled as fast in its wild state 

 as the Italian honeysuckle has done. It blooms from June to 

 August, and sparingly again in autumn. 



When daylight "begins to fade, these long, slender-tubed 

 buds expand to welcome their chosen benefactors, the sphinx 

 moths, wooing them with fragrance so especially strong and 

 sweet at this time that, long after dark, guests may be guided from 

 afar by it alone, and entertaining them with copious draughts of 

 deeply hidden nectar, which their long tongues alone may drain. 

 Poised above the blossoms, they sip without pause of their whir- 

 ring wings, and it is not strange that many people mistake them 

 in the half light for humming-birds. Indeed, they are often 

 called humming-bird moths. Darting away suddenly and swift 

 as thought, they have also earned the name of hawk moths. Be- 

 cause the caterpillars have a curious trick of raising the fore part 

 of their bodies and remaining motionless so long (like an Egyptian 

 sphinx), the commoner name seems most appropriate. A sphinx 

 moth at rest curls up its exceedingly long tongue like a watch- 

 spring: in action only the humming-bird can penetrate to such 

 depths; hence that honeysuckle which prefers to woo the tiny 

 bird, whose decided preference is for red, is the trumpet or coral 

 honeysuckle; whereas the other twiners developed deep, tubular 

 flowers that are white or yellow, so that the moths may see them 

 in the dark, when red blossoms are engulfed in the prevailing 

 blackness. Moreover, the latter bloom at a season when the 

 crepuscular and nocturnal moths are most abundant. Rough, 

 rounded pollen grains, carried on the hairs and scales on the under 

 side of the moth's body from his head to his abdomen, including 



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