CHAPTER XI 



FLORAL FORMS AND THEIR RELATIONS -TO INSECTS 



To me the meanest flower that blows does bring 

 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 



WORDSWORTH. 



S there is a good deal of ground to be covered in this chapter, we will 

 not waste time on the threshold. Our subject is the Flower in 

 many respects the most important, as certainly it is the most interesting, of 

 the subjects of which Botany treats. The Flower contains the organs of 

 reproduction, a fact which accounts for its pre-eminent importance : while 

 the manner in which those organs discharge their appointed functions 



assisted often by the most unlikely agencies, 

 as water, wind, and insects gives to the 

 study of the Flower an attractiveness all 

 its own. Root, stem, and leaf are not with- 

 out their fascinations, too, as we have 

 sought to show in earlier chapters, but the 

 Flower is the part of the plant which 

 rightfully commands the lion's share of 

 interest. 



As with the leaf, the beginning of the 

 Flower is the bud. Flower-buds originate 

 in much the same way as leaf-buds, and 

 cannot be distinguished from the latter in 

 their earlier stage. Like leaf-buds, too, 

 they are formed either in the axils or at 

 the ends of branches, and in accordance 

 with those conditions are named respec- 

 tively axillary and terminal. 



The reader will probably recognize the 

 little flower shown in fig. 379. It is the 

 Moneywort or Creeping Loosestrife (Lysi- 

 machia nummularia), an English wild- 

 flower partial to ruins and damp woods, 

 and a favourite rockery plant under culti- 

 vation. It, and its near relation, the Wood- 

 312 



FIG. 379. CREEPING LOOSESTRIFE. 



An example of solitary and axillary flowers. 



