LUTHER BURBANK 



Most wild flowers of a given species are of a 

 single color, or of a definite arrangement or com- 

 bination of colors. Bees and other insects have 

 learned to distinguish this characteristic color or 

 combination of colors, and to go with certainty 

 from one flower to another of the same species, 

 thus unconsciously serving the flower well by 

 cross-pollenizing its blossoms. 



I have often thought how confusing it must be 

 to the bees on coming to our gardens to find flow- 

 ers that perhaps are familiar to perfume and form, 

 now arrayed in a dress of unfamiliar hues. But 

 bees, like flowers, can adapt themselves to their 

 environment. They soon adapt themselves to the 

 new colors and combinations of colors that man 

 has given the flowers, and they go about their task 

 with undiminished celerity and certainty. 



Recognition of the fact that wild flowers have 

 been given their colors by the insects through the 

 slow process of natural selection (in which flowers 

 that lack the color were not visited by the bees and 

 hence produced no offspring; whereas the flowers 

 that did produce the color were fertilized, and per- 

 petuated their kind, and reproduced their qualities 

 in abundant progeny) gives us the clue to the way 

 in which we may go about the development of a 

 new color or color-combination in a flower. 



Suppose, for example, we desire to change the 



[30] 



