THE WIND AS CARRIER. 



27 



this order a regular gradation from handsome 

 flowers like the dog-rose, through smaller and 

 smaller blossoms like the strawberry and the 

 potentilla, to green petalless types like lady's- 

 • mantle and parsley-piert, or, last of all, to wind- 

 fertilised blossoms like those of the salad-burnet. 

 In the male flowers the very numerous stamens 

 hang out on long thread-like stalks from the wee 

 green cup, so that 

 the wind may readily 

 catch and carry the 

 pollen ; in the female 

 blossoms the stigma 

 is divided into plume- 

 like brushes, which 

 readily entrap any 

 passing pollen-grain. 

 Moreover, though 

 both kinds of flower 

 grow on the same 

 head, the females are 

 mostly at the top of 

 the bunch and the 

 males below them. 



This makes it difficult for the pollen from the same 

 head to fertilise the females, as it would easily do 

 if the males were at the top. Nor is that all ; the 

 female flowers open first on each head, and hang 

 out their pretty feathery stigmas to the breeze 

 that bends the stem ; as soon as they have been 

 fertilised from a neighbour plant, the males in 

 turn begin to open, and shed their pollen for the 

 use of other flowers. In salad-burnet, however, 

 the division of the sexes into separate flowers has 

 not become a quite fixed habit; for, though most 

 of the blossoms are either male or female only, 



Fig. 27.— a, male, and B, female 

 flower of salad-burnet, very much 

 magnified. The flowers grow to- 

 gether in little tassel-like heads. 



