SOME SUMMER FLOWERS 



pods. Toward autumn, when the seeds ripen, the pods 

 burst open, and you see at first hundreds of scale-like seeds 

 beautifully arranged along a silken, white centre; each 

 seed rises, expands, dries its wings like a butterfly coming 

 from its cocoon, and finally . floats off on probably the 

 softest, downiest ball of fluff in nature. 



It is the summer months that the cactus family, too, 

 chooses for flowering ; the night-blooming cereus of our 

 gardens for instance, or the strange, weird cacti we bring 

 from the deserts to our public parks, or the prickly pear, 

 or tuna cactus, so common in Southern California on dry hill- 

 sides and sandy wastes. We have noticed before how the 

 cactus stores both food and moisture above ground, and 

 how it defends these stores with its dreaded spines and 

 prickles. Some of us have seen the savage cactus hedges 

 planted by the old mission fathers as a defense against 

 hostile Indians. 



Naturally, we expect such able plants to produce 

 remarkable flowers ; and so they do. The flower of the 

 night-blooming cereus becomes a miracle of beauty, size 

 and fragrance, in order to court the attention of some huge 

 Mexican night moth, and doubtless every other beautiful 

 cactus flower we cultivate, has, in its native land, a story of 

 its own. At any rate, our tuna cactus flowers repay obser- 

 vation. They open only during the brightest hours of the 

 day, deeming it not worth while to proffer hospitality unless 

 there are sure to be crowds of guests. They serve a very 

 thin film of honey deep down in the corolla, but they offer 

 so much pollen that guests seem never to look for honey. 

 Now this clever tuna has a plan for compelling the guests 

 to carry much more pollen than they take for their own 

 use. To discover this trick, you should take a newly- 

 opened flower. The stamens lie back against the petals, 

 but if you touch the filaments, they immediately sweep 

 over to the centre, so that a guest would be buried 



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