SOME EARL Y FLO WERS 



that among the stamens are yellow, cushion-like bodies, 

 covered with honey. Now bees and other insects have 

 found out about this honey, and if they have been to older 

 flowers for it, they are covered with pollen. When once 

 bees begin to visit peonies, they visit every peony in sight 

 before calling on other flowers, and when they discover 

 this opening bud and enter it, they must strike the stigmas 

 and rub off some of the pollen on them ; so our peony gets 

 pollen for seed-making from some other flower. The 

 botanists call this, cross pollination. You can see 

 now why such flowers should not be green ; the color 

 helps the insect to find the flower. The odor, too, is an 

 advertisement. 



The buttercup is first cousin to the peony, though you 

 may not see any family resemblance ; we will talk of that 

 in some other chapter. It has not such ample storehouses 

 as the peony, but there is some food stored in its short 

 underground stem and its little clustered roots, which sur- 

 vive the dry season. Its leaves resemble the peony leaves, 

 and behave in much the same way, but its flowers, instead 

 of hanging down their heads, look straight at the sun and 

 follow it all day long. As the flowers grow older the green 

 sepals, which in the bud help in food-making, turn yellow, 

 bend back, and finally fall off entirely ; they really are not 

 needed, because there are so many bright varnished petals 

 to glisten in the sun. If you were a bee flying toward this 

 flower, you would see something else glistening, a tiny 

 drop of honey at the base of every petal. 



Now study the flowers to see how the bees repay them 

 for their hospitality. A buttercup has many little pistils, 

 each of which has an ovary, containing just one ovule, and a 

 wee, fuzzy stigma at the very top. There are also many 

 stamens. Find a flower that has just opened for the first 

 time. The stigmas will be ready for pollen, and the 

 stamens will be standing back in a compact ring, not yet 



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