84 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR, 



delion clocks from our babyhood upward, they would 

 certainly strike us as being very curious and interesting 

 objects indeed. 



If you pull a blossoming head of dandelion to pieces, 

 you see at once that it is not a single flower, as it appears 

 at first sight, but a whole collection of tiny separate 

 florets crowded together in a bunch on a circular disk or 

 cushion. Each floret stands complete in itself, with a 

 tubular yellow corolla, a set of wee slender stamens j and 

 a delicate two-lobed pistil in the centre, both lobes being 

 curled round gracefully like a ram's horn. It has its own 

 fruit, too : a small white object at the bottom, looking 

 exactly like a single seed, as it practically is. In the 

 daisy you get something of the same arrangement ; only 

 there the yellow florets of the central part are bell- 

 shaped, like miniature hyacinths or heath-blossoms, and 

 only the pink-tipped outer rays are split down one side 

 so as to make their corolla more like a strap than a cup 

 or bell. In the dandelion, on the other hand, the same 

 tendency has gone a little farther, and all the florets in 

 the head have become strap-shaped rays, so as to let vari- 

 ous small insects get easily at the drop of honey which 

 each floret secretes in the nectary at its base. The daisy 

 is a comparatively exclusive plant, which lays itself out 

 mainly for distinguished visitors ; the dandelion is a 

 sort of common innkeeper, which welcomes all comers 

 equally without regard to rank or station. So we see the 

 tastes of their different clients reflected in their own 

 colors. The daisy has evolved white rays with pink tips 

 to satisfy the eyes of a more aesthetically exacting circle ; 

 the dandelion retains the primitive yellow corolla of its 

 kind, the hue that best suits the requirements of mis- 

 cellaneous small flies and petty honey-seeking beetles. 

 Each in its own way has proved very successful ; for do 



