Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



infinite number of buds, big and little, bespeak an 

 endless stream of successors. All May and a large 

 part of June the glory continues " a feast for sore 

 eyes " and even when its zenith is past it still con- 

 tinues to put forth a very respectable, if gradually 

 diminishing, floral show for another two months, and 

 is speckled with odd blossoms right into the autumn. 

 "When Gorse is out of flower, kissing is out of 

 fashion " is as true of the garden Gorse as of the wild 

 Gorse, while the actual period of its zenith is longer. 



In the Double Gorse the flower loses something of 

 the butterfly-type of the wild form. In the latter 

 there are two yellow-brown sepals and five petals, one, 

 " the standard," being large and upstanding ; two 

 smaller ones are wings, one at each side, while 

 two yet smaller are united to form the keel. The 

 wings and keel interlock by ingenious hooks at the 

 base of each, readily to be seen on dissecting a blossom. 

 Inside the petals ten stamens, their heads all separate, 

 have their filaments united into a tube and lie in the 

 keel, and the ripe pollen falls out of them and collects 

 in its tip. In the centre of their filament tube is the 

 long slender seed-pod covered with white hairs and 

 carrying a hooked column which also runs up to 

 the end of the keel. In the course of nature a bee 

 straddles the keel, whose interlocking with the wings 

 promptly gives way, so down it goes, and up spring the 



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