LUTHER BURBANK 
beautiful and lovely in the bloom of that geranium 
—and the geranium itself. 
Here is a plant, the geranium, so anxious to 
produce variations in its offspring that it has lost 
the power of fertilizing its own eggs and risked 
its whole posterity upon the cooperation of a 
neighboring plant. 
It has no power of locomotion—no ability to 
get about from place to place in search of pollen 
for its eggs or of eggs in need of its pollen; nor 
has its neighbor; so they call in an outside 
messenger of reproduction—the bee. 
The geranium makes its honey at the bottom 
of its blossom. It places movable packages of 
pollen dust balanced on springy stamens in such 
a way that, to reach the sweets, the pollen hedge 
must be broken through. It keeps its egg chamber 
closed and its pistil unreceptive while the pollen 
dust is there, and as if to advertise its hidden 
sweets to the nectar loving bees, it throws out 
shapely petals of brilliant hue and exudes a 
charming scent. | 
And thus, the bees, attracted from afar, crowd- 
ing into the tiny wells to get their sweets, become 
besmeared with pollen dust as they enter a pollen 
bearing bloom—and leave a load of pollen dust 
wherever they find a receptive stigma. 
[78] 
