The Strange Story of the Flowers 



the time of winged allies, and attracting their 



attention from afar as scattered blossoms would 

 fail to do. Besides this massing, we have union 

 more intimate still as in the dandelion, the sun- 

 flower and the marigold. These and their fellow 

 composites each seem an individual; a penknife 

 discloses each of them to be an aggregate of 

 blossoms. So gainful has this kind of co-opera- 

 tion proved that composites arc now dominant 

 among plants in every quarter of the globe. 

 As to how composites grew before they learned 

 that union is strength, a hint is dropped in the 

 "sport" of the daisy known as "the hen and 

 chickens,'' where perhaps as many as a dozen 

 florets, each on a stalk of its own, ray out from 

 a mother flower. 



While for the most part insects have been 

 mere choosers from among various styles of 

 architecture set before them by plants, they 

 have sometimes risen to the dignity of builders 

 on their own account, and without ever knowing 

 it. The buttress of the larkspur has sprung f< »rth 

 in response to the pressure of one bee's weight 

 after another, and many a like structure has 

 had the very same origin, — or shall we say, 

 provocation? In these and in other examples 

 unnumbered, culminating in the marvellous 

 orchids and their ministers, there has come 

 about the closest adaptation of flower-shape 

 to insect-form, the one now clearly the counter- 

 part of the other, 



We must not forget that the hospitality of a 

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