218 LUTHER BURBANK 



enough, inasmuch as what would commonly be 

 called a single blossom — say a single daisy, or 

 aster, or dandelion, or thistle — is in reality made 

 up of a very large number of individual flowers 

 grouped together into a floral community, which 

 advertises its location to the insects by arranging 

 a single circle of petaloid colored emblems that 

 do service for the entire community. 



A Measure of Economy 



The economy of this arrangement, in the 

 matter of saving plant energy, is obvious. 



Flowers that have not adopted this system are 

 obliged to supply a colored advertising emblem 

 for each individual set of stamens and pistils. 

 These composite flowers make one such floral 

 emblem serve the purpose of scores or even 

 hundreds of flowers. 



Of course the floral community, even though 

 the individual flowers are very small, occupies 

 considerable room. It is necessary, therefore, to 

 provide a largish receptacle to hold the flowers, 

 and in particular to hold their seeds when 

 developed. The outside of this receptacle is 

 usually covered, for protection, by overlapping 

 series of scaly bracts or little leaves that form 

 a sort of armor. A glance at a sunflower will 

 illustrate the plan that has been pretty generally 



