PART III. | THE MECHANISMS OF FLOWERS. 429 
Orv. SCROPHULARINE. 
317. VERBASCUM NIGRUM, L.—The long yellow racemes are 
very striking, and the flowers are made still more conspicuous by 
the orange-red anthers and violet hairs upon the filaments. The 
plant is visited by very various species of insects. 
I sought repeatedly for honey without success, and had come to 
the conclusion that the flower contained none. On July 28, 1871, 
however, towards evening, [ saw a small moth, Ephestia elutella, 
Hiibn.,) busy sucking very assiduously on the flowers of a plant of 
this species in my room. Standing on a petal, it thrust its 
proboscis down between two stamens? into the short tube, and 
applied it to various parts of the inner wall of the corolla. After 
spending a considerable time on one flower, it rolled up its proboscis 
and flew off to another. It continued these operations for some 
minutes, and therefore certainly found honey; and the next 
morning I found in many flowers, but not in all, minute drops 
of honey adhering to the smooth inner surface of the tube. The 
flowers afford a large quantity of orange-red pollen, accessible to 
all insects; and I observed that in the case of Syrphus balteatus 
the violet clavate hairs form a third attraction. 
The position of the parts of the flower makes cross-fertilisation 
in case of insect-visits not inevitable but exceedingly likely, while 
in absence of insects self-fertilisation easily occurs. The short tube 
widens out into a flat, five-lobed limb, which takes up an almost. 
vertical position: the inferior lobe is the longest, and the two 
superior are shorter than the lateral lobes, so that an insect settles 
most conveniently upon the inferior.. The stamens project almost 
horizontally, but curve slightly upwards from the tube, and diverge 
slightly from one another ; they alternate with the petals, and again 
the superior is the shortest and the two inferior longer than the 
lateral. The anthers, which stand close together, dehisce along 
_ their outer edge, covering themselves almost completely with 
orange-red pollen. The style is shorter than the inferior stamens, 
and bent down slightly below them. An insect standing on the 
inferior petal generally touches the knobbed stigma first, on its way 
1 Named for me by my friend Dr. Speyer, of Rhoden. 
2 Just between each pair of stamens, the central part of the corolla bears a 
chestnut-brown spot. Sprengel (702, p. 122) considered these spots to be honey- 
guides, though he could find no honey in the flowers, My discovery of honey 
confirms his view. 
