Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



heart of a Mezereon flower is at a brilliant pitch, so 

 vivid is the green of the ovary, so bright is the yellow 

 of the anthers, so rich the rose-purple of the sepals. 

 When the flower opens both sets of essential organs 

 are ready to act the anthers above opening to dis- 

 charge their pollen, the flat stigma disc below waiting 

 ready to receive it ; and it does not seem as though the 

 Mezereon, at any rate, cared much about being fer- 

 tilised from its neighbours, in spite of its bountiful 

 supply of honey and scent. Occasionally, no doubt, a 

 grain of pollen may be brought to it by some fairly 

 long-tongued bee or moth the plant has quite a 

 number of visitors, survivors of the winter cold, 

 especially hive bees but the great chance is that one 

 of its own pollen grains may fall or be pushed down 

 on to its own stigma and so self-fertilisation happen, 

 and it needs but a single grain of pollen to fertilise 

 the solitary ovule. The only thing that militates 

 against self-fertilisation is that many of the flowers are 

 horizontal, so that the stamens are not actually straight 

 above the receptive stigma, ; but indeed, if flowers are 

 quite isolated from any chance of visitors, they still 

 set fruit freely. It almost seems, in fact, as if the 

 plant actually puts difficulties in the way of visitors, 

 the stamens block the tube mouth so much, and the 

 honey which lies in a nectary at the base of the ovary 

 is so difficult of access. 



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