Gleanings in Bee Culture 



hues of the phmiage of Inrds; but nowhere 

 are her inexhaustible resources in chromat- 

 ics so bountifully exhibited as in the colors 

 of flowers. 



See, and scorn all duller 

 Taste, how heavn lover color. 

 How great Nature clearly joys in red and green; 

 What sweet thoughts she thinks 

 Of violets and pinks. 

 And a thousand flashing hues made solely to be 

 seen: 



See her whitest lilies 



Chill the silver showers. 

 And what red mouth has her rose, 

 The woman of the flowers! 



A llora in which the flowers are all of one 

 color would beat a great disadvantage. The 

 value of color contrasts is evident, for they 

 enable the visitors, more especially the bees, 

 easily to remain constant to a single plant 

 species in collecting pollen and nectar. If 

 they were to visit flowers indiscriminately, 

 much pollen would be wasted and much 

 time and effort lost in locating the nectar. 

 In the Alpine flora of the Tyrol, in the 

 heights above the tree-line, there is no spring 

 and no autumn — only a short summer fol- 

 lowing a long winter. " All the flowers have, 

 therefore, to blossom in this short time. 

 "White and red, yellow and blue, brown 

 and green," says Kerner, "stand in varied 

 combination on a hand's-breadth of space. 

 Hardly has the snow melted, than there ap- 

 pear almost simultaneously the violet bells 

 of the soldanellas and the golden flowers of 

 the cinquefoil, the M'hite crowfoot and an- 

 drosace, the red silenes and primulas, the 

 blue gentians and the yellow auriculas, the 

 heaven-blue forget me-not and the yellow 

 violet as well as the saxifrages in every con- 

 ceivable color." Such a meadow in Alaska, 

 where the summers are equally short, is 

 thus described by Burroughs: 



starred with flowers of every hue, 

 .Gold and purple, white and blue; 

 Painted cup, anemone, 

 Jacob's-ladder, fleur-de-lis, 

 Orchid, harebell, shooting-star. 

 Crane's-bill, lupine, seen afar: 

 Primrose, poppy, saxifrage. 

 Pictured type on Nature's page. 



According to a well-known principle of 

 physics, each color appears more brilliant in 

 contrast with other hues than it would if 

 viewed alone. This can be easily shown by 

 a simple experiment, which any one can 

 perform. Cut out two pieces of red paper, 

 each two inches square. Place one of the 

 red squares on a large sheet of green paper 

 and the other red square on a large sheet of 

 red paper. The red square on the green pa- 

 per will appear so much more brilliant than 

 the red square on the red paper that the ob- 

 server will have difficulty in believing that 

 they are identical in hue. 



Some years ago I began an inquiry as to 

 how many flowers there are of each color in 

 the flora of North America. In northeastern 

 America north of Tennessee and east of the 

 Rocky Mountains there have been describ- 

 ed 4020 species of flowering plants, or angi- 

 osperms. Partly by direct examination and 

 I)artly by reference to various systematic 

 works 1 have tabulated the entire number 



according to their predominant colors — a 

 labor which, I need hardly say, extended 

 over several years. I find that in this area 

 there are 1244 green, 956 white, 801 yellow, 

 260 red, 4;>4 purple, and 325 blue flowers. In 

 every hundred species there are 30.9 green, 

 23.8 white, 19.9 yellow, 6.4 red, 10.9 purple, 

 and 8 blue. 



The green, white, and yellow flowers num- 

 ber 3001, or three-fourths of the entire num- 

 ber; while the red, purple, and blue amount 

 to only 1019. Though there are many ex- 

 ceptions, the flrst group usually have regu- 

 lar or wheel-shaped or cup-shaped flowers 

 with the nectar easily accessible, and are 

 visited by all flower-loving insects — a mis- 

 cellaneous company of beetles, flies, butter- 

 flies, wasps, and bees. The flowers belong- 

 ing to the second group are very frequently 

 irregul. r or one-sided, with the nectar deep- 

 ly concealed, and are attractive chiefly to 

 long-tongued bees, butterflies, and hover- 

 flies {Syrphidit:). The tendency of flowers 

 to change from green, white, and yellow to 

 red, purple, and blue, is much stronger than 

 the reverse; but red, purple, and blue flowers 

 usually have the petals white or yellowish 

 at the base and in the bud, and not infre- 

 quently the whole corolla reverts to one of 

 these colors. 



Have these relations any significance? 

 Undoubtedly they have. They are signals 

 pointing out to us the course our flora has 

 pursued in its evolution. The green, white, 

 and yellow colors are older and more primi- 

 tive than the red, purple, and blue, and 

 were more common in the primordial 

 flora. The red, purple, and blue flowers 

 are, as a whole, of much more recent origin, 

 and have been developed from green, white, 

 and yellow blossoms. For example, the but- 

 tercups are a much older genus than the 

 columbines and larkspurs, and the cinque- 

 foils are more ancient than the pea, bean, 

 or vetch; while, again, the viburnums are 

 older than the honeysuckles. The orchids 

 have certainly developed more recently than 

 the lilies Occasionally irregular flowers re- 

 vert to their ancestral stages and produce 

 perfectly regular forms. Individual white 

 flowers may change to red, as in the Sweet 

 William; or to yellow, as in the climbing 

 honeysuckle; or yellow flowers may change 

 to red as in the bush honeysuckle and the 

 lantana. 



Let us next inquire how many of these 

 4020 flowers found in northeastern America 

 are pollinated by the wind and how many 

 by insects. Among wind-pollinated plants 

 are the grasses, sedges, and rushes; many 

 homely weeds like the pigweeds, sorrels, 

 nettles, and ragweeds, as well as many de- 

 ciduous bushes and trees, as the alders, pop- 

 lars, elms, oaks, beeches, and birches. After 

 a careful examinationof every genus I place 

 the number of wind-pollinated plants (in- 

 cluding a few ])ollinated by water) at about 

 1046. This number is probably a little too 

 large, for in the case of some western species 

 there are no recorded observations, and they 

 may be self-pollinated. Still it can not be 



