Red and Indefinites 



to the rhythm of the breeze, along the ledge of overhanging 

 rocks, it coquettes with some Punchinello as if daring him to 

 reach her at his peril. Who is he ? Let us sit a while on the 

 rocky ledge and watch for her lovers. 



Presently a big muscular bumblebee booms along. Owing to 

 his great strength, an inverted, pendent blossom, from which he 

 must cling upside down, has no more terrors for him than a 

 trapeze for the trained acrobat. His long tongue — if he is one of 

 the largest of our sixty-two species of Bombus — can suck almost 

 any flower unless it is especially adapted to night-flying sphinx 

 moths, but can he drain this ? He is the truest benefactor of the 

 European columbine (A. vulgaris, see p. 15), whose spurs sug- 

 gested the talons of an eagle (aquila) to imaginative Linnaeus 

 when he gave this group of plants its generic name. Smaller 

 bumblebees, unable through the shortness of their tongues to 

 feast in a legitimate manner, may be detected nipping holes in the 

 tips of all columbines, where the nectar is secreted, just as they do 

 in larkspurs, Dutchman's breeches, squirrel corn, butter and eggs, 

 and other flowers whose deeply hidden nectaries make dining too 

 difficult for the little rogues. Fragile butterflies, absolutely de- 

 pendent on nectar, hover near our showy wild columbine with 

 its five tempting horns of plenty, but sail away again, knowing 

 as they do that their weak legs are not calculated to stand the 

 strain of an inverted position from a pendent flower, nor are their 

 tongues adapted to slender tubes unless these may be entered from 

 above. The tongues of both butterflies and moths bend readily 

 only when directed beneath their bodies. It will be noticed that 

 our columbine's funnel-shaped tubes contract just below the point 

 where the nectar is secreted — doubtless to protect it from small 

 bees. When we see the honey-bee or the little wild bees — Halictus 

 chiefly — on the flower, we may know they get pollen only. 



Finally a ruby-throated humming bird whirs into sight. Pois- 

 ing before a columbine, and moving around it to drain one spur 

 after another until the five are emptied, he flashes like thought to 

 another group of inverted red cornucopias, visits in turn every 

 flower in the colony, then whirs away quite as suddenly as he 

 came. Probably to him, and no longer to the outgrown bumble- 

 bee, has the flower adapted itself. The European species wears 

 blue, the bee's favorite color according to Sir John Lubbock ; the 

 nectar hidden in its spurs, which are shorter, stouter, and curved, 

 is accessible only to the largest humblebees. There are no hum- 

 ming birds in Europe. (See jewel-weed, p. 314.) Our native 

 columbine, on the contrary, has longer, contracted, straight, erect 

 spurs, most easily drained by the ruby-throat which, like Eugene 

 Field, ever delights in "any color at a'll so long as it's red." 



To help make the columbine conspicuous, even the sepals 

 become red ; but the flower is yellow within, it is thought to guide 

 visitors to the nectaries. The stamens protrude like a golden tassel. 



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