90 



Catkins 



threads of the pistil, each of these pistil flowers will in 

 due course bear a hazel nut. 



Next term when you learn about other kinds of 

 flowers you will find that, although other brightly 

 coloured parts are often added to make a flower more 

 attractive, the stamens and pistil are the really im- 

 portant ones. In most of the flowers with which you 

 are familiar these two are found side by side in the 

 same flower, but in the catkin-bearing trees the stamens 

 and pistil grow in separate bundles and form respec- 



(6) 



Fig. 45. Hornbeam, (a) Male flower. (6) Female flowers (two). 



tively what are known as male and female flowers. 

 When a great number of little flowers of one kind grow 

 on a central stalk they form a catkin, and so you get 

 two kinds of catkins, one of male and one of female 

 flowers. In the case of the hazel you found both male 

 and female flowers on one tree, but in some other kinds 

 of trees this is not so. For instance the gold and silver 

 catkins of the sallow or willow grow on separate trees 

 and the pollen is carried from the male to the female 

 flowers by the bees which gather honey first on one 

 tree then on another. When their pollen is gone the 



