150 



THE DICTIONARY OF GARDENING, 



HOMOGYNE (from homos, the same, similar, and 

 gyne, female ; so called from the similarity of the female 

 flowers to the others). OBD. Composite. A small genus, 

 comprising but three species of stemless, hardy herbs, 

 natives of the mountains of Europe. Flower-heads white 

 or purple; scapes one or two-headed, furnished with one 

 or two distant leaves. Leaves radical, broad, cordate, 

 angular or sinuato-dentate. The species thrive in any 

 tolerably damp garden border. 



H. alpina (alpine), fl.-heads light purple, discoid ; scape one- 

 flowered, nearly naked. March to May. I. remform, toothed, 

 smooth, h. 6in. Austria, 1710. (B. M. 84, under name of Tussi- 

 lago alpina.) 



H. discolor (two-coloured), fl.-heads inodorous ; scape solitary, 

 terete, purple, clothed with whitish wool. June and July. I. 

 radical, sub-rotund, cordate at base, acutely crenulated, thick, 

 firm ; upper surface green, shining-glabrous, boldly nerved ; under 

 surface densely and shortly tomentose. h. 6in. Austria to 

 Italy, 1633. (J. F. A. iii. 247, under name of Tussilago decolor.) 



HOMOIANTHUS. Now included under Perezia 

 (which see). 



HONCXENYA (named after G. A. Honckeny, 1724- 

 1805, author of a Flora of Germany). SYN. Clappertonia. 

 OBD. Tiliacece. A monotypic genus. The species is a 

 stellate-pubescent stove shrub, from tropical Africa. It 

 thrives in a mixture of loam and peat. Propagated by 

 young cuttings, inserted in sand, under a hand glass, in 

 heat. 

 H. flclfolia (Fig-leaved). JL bluish-violet, large, terminal, in 



threes. I. dentate, or three to seven-lobed. 



HONESTY. See Lunaria biennis. 



HONEY BEE (Apis mellifica). This is not the snit- 



ble occasion to give a full account of the structure 



nd habits of the Honey Bee, or Hive Bee, and of its 



Hies ; but these insects are of such great value to hor- 



iculturists, because of the part they perform in the con- 



eyance of pollen from flower to flower, and thereby 



securing the production of healthy seed, that they cannot 



be passed by in silence. Their habits, &c., will be again 



treated of under Wasps (which see), with which they 



agree in many of their social customs. The Bees form a 



numerous group of insects, with a considerable general 



similarity of aspect. All have the habit of making cells 



for the protection of the eggs and larvae. The Solitary 



Bees form these calls either in galleries hollowed out by 



themselves, or in holes or nests, built by them of mud or 



Queen. 

 FiQ. 239. HONEY BEES. 



other materials. The Humble Bees and Honey Bees build 

 the cells of wax secreted from their bodies. They collect 

 the pollen and the honey or nectar from flowers, and feed 

 their larvae on a mixture of these substances : hence, 

 they have to make constant visits to flowers. The honey 

 is also stored up in wax cells as food for their own use 

 in winter. Among the Solitary Bees, only males and 

 females can be distinguished, and the latter do all the 

 work of providing for the larvas. The Honey Bees com- 

 prise males or drones, perfect females or queens (usually 

 one in each nest), and undeveloped females, called neuters 

 or workers. The accompanying woodcuts (see Fig. 239), 

 which were engraved from drawings made by Mr. Frank 

 Cheshire, for his large work on Bee-keeping, show the 

 relative sizes and forms of the three. After the queen 

 is impregnated, the drones are killed by the workers. 



Honey Bee continued. 



The queen's share in providing for the welfare of the com- 

 munity is restricted to laying eggs. On the workers falls 

 all the work, viz., attending to the young brood, collect- 

 ing food, and such-like duties. If, by any accident, the 

 queen is lost, the workers can cause a worker-larva to 

 develop into a queen, by supplying it with special food 

 and enlarging the cell in which it lives. Beturning now 

 to the relation of Bees to flowers, we find that they are 

 specially suited to remove the honey from flowers in 

 which it is situated at the bottom of a tube of more than 

 iin. long. The proboscis of the worker is formed of five 

 pieces, of which the central piece (tongue) bears hairs 

 near the tip, and is used to lick up the honey with. 

 Flowers with honey at the bottom of narrow tubes, are 

 specially attractive to Honey Bees, as in such it is 

 beyond the reach of most other insects, and affords, there- 

 fore, a good supply to the Bees. To fit the workers 

 for collecting the pollen, their hind legs have the middle 

 joint (tibia) concave on one side, and furnished with rows 

 of hairs, so placed as to retain the pollen, as in a shallow 

 vessel. Certain flowers are of such a form that few other 

 insects than Bees can reach the pollen or the nectar in 

 them. Flowers adapted for fertilisation by Bees, e.g., 

 Antirrhinum, have the stamens and stigmas so situated 

 that, in visiting the flowers, the insects must become 

 dusted with the pollen, and it is conveyed to the stigma 

 of the next flower of the same kind visited by them. 

 Hence, they generally effect cross-fertilisation, the value 

 of which, in the production of well-developed and healthy 

 seeds, has been proved by experiment in many kinds of 

 plants. (See Darwin's " Cross and Self -Fertilisation in the 

 Vegetable Kingdom.") The Honey Bee seldom extracts 

 the honey through holes bored in the flower tube, as the 

 Humble Bee sometimes does, to the detriment of the 

 flowers. On comparing the various kinds of Bees with 

 the Honey Bee, the latter is found to be the most per- 

 fectly adapted of all the species for the collection of 

 honey and pollen, and for insuring cross-fertilisation 

 of the flowers it frequents to obtain these. Honey Bees 

 usually restrict their visits more or less to one or two 

 species of plant each day. Works that give much in- 

 formation on Bees are, among others : Huber's " New 

 Observations on the Natural History of Bees," Kirby 

 and Spence's " Introduction to Entomology," Sevan's " The 

 Honey Bee," Shuckard's " British Bees," and Cheshire's 

 " Bee-keeping : its Science and Practice." 



HONEY BERRY. See Melicocca bijuga. 



HONEYDEW. The name given to a sweet sticky 

 substance, abundant on the leaves of many plants in 

 summer, especially when the weather is warm and dry. 

 It gives the parts on which it lies the appearance of 

 being wet or varnished. Though it may occur on 

 almost any parts of plants, it is most abundant on the 

 leaves, where it is almost always restricted to the 

 upper surface, covering it uniformly, or in the form of 

 minute spots crowded on the spaces between the veins. 

 It is more abundant on woody plants than on herbs. 

 Various causes have been assigned for its production ; 

 the belief was at one time entertained that it fell from 

 the air. Afterwards, it was observed that aphides and 

 certain allied insects secreted a fluid similar in its 

 qualities to Honeydew, and that this secretion became 

 sprinkled over adjoining bodies; and it was suggested 

 that these insects were the producers of the Honeydew. 

 The fact that the substance covers the upper surface 

 of the leaves, while the insects are almost always found 

 on the lower surface, was accounted for by supposing 

 that the secretion fell from the insects on to the 

 leaves beneath. There is no doubt that this is one 

 mode in which the Honeydew is produced ; but it 

 has frequently been observed that plants, both in 

 the open air and in houses, have been much covered 

 with the coating, when no insects could be found 



