CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES 



Collinsia does not furnish so much pollen as the lupine, 

 but the supply lasts a long time, because the anthers shed 

 pollen one ' after another; besides, the Collinsia provides 

 honey, saving it for the bees, and advertising it by pretty 

 spots and lines. The stigmas are mature in the older 

 flowers. 



Another member of this family is the owl's-clover, or 

 the painter's brush, Fig. 54. The pink or purplish and 

 white flowers, grow together in a very social way, and the 

 little leaves or bracts among them have their tips white 

 or pink, thus helping to make the cluster showy. Each 

 flower keeps its honey at the bottom of a tube too deep and 

 narrow for bees and small insects, yet it dares to keep its 

 stigma, which is like a fuzzy ball, quite above its anthers; 

 that is, the flower trusts entirely to its guests for pollina- 

 tion. Now the anthers are tucked away in the upper lip, 

 and the queer, puffy, white, lower lip is not large enough 

 for a platform, still some bees know how to get the pollen. 

 They cling to the upper lip while they drag out the pollen, 

 and so must strike the stigma. Butterflies and moths 

 seem to be the preferred guests; and the white lower lip 

 shows night moths the way to the honey. 



The other flower in the same picture, has several 

 common names, painted cup, scarlet painter's brush, Indian 

 plume, etc. It is a plant beloved by the humming birds. 

 The tips of the bracts and the calyxes, as well as the corollas, 

 are scarlet, the humming bird's favorite color; and the 

 honey is beyond the reach of most other guests. The lower 

 lip of the flower can scarcely be discerned, but a platform is 

 of no use to humming birds. You have seen them dart from 

 cluster to cluster, pausing the merest instant at each flower 

 as they sip its honey. No other guest is half so swift, so it 

 is not strange that so many flowers reserve their honey 

 specially for humming birds. When the painted cup grows 

 in masses, one rarely fails to see the birds paying their visits; 



