HOW FLOWERS CLUB TOGETHER. 137 



for the big blossoms to trust to their own indi- 

 vidual attractions, and for the little ones to feel 

 that union is strength, and to organise accord- 

 ingly. 



Botanists have invented many technical names 

 for various groupings of flowers in particular 

 fashions, with most of which I will not trouble 

 you. It will be sufficient to recall mentally the 

 very different way in which the flowers are ar- 

 ranged in the lily-of-the-valley, the foxglove, the 

 Solomon's seal, the heath, the scabious, the cow- 

 slip, the sweet-william, the forget-me-not, in order 

 to see what variety natural selection has produced 

 in ail these matters. Two instances must serve 

 to illustrate their mode of action. The foxglove 

 grows in hedgerows and thickets, and turns its 

 one-sided spike towards the sun and the open ; its 

 flowers open regularly from below upward, and are 

 fertilised by bees, who enter the blossoms, and 

 whose body is beautifully adapted to come in 

 contact, first with the stamens, and later with the 

 stigma, (Examine this familiar flower for your- 

 self in the proper season.) In the forget-me-not, 

 on the ' other hand, the unopened flowers are 

 coiled up like a scorpion's tail ; but as each one 

 opens, the stem below it lengthens and unrolls, so 

 that at each moment the two or three flowers just 

 ready for fertilisation are displayed conspicuously 

 at the top of the apparent cluster. 



There are two forms of cluster, however, so 

 specially important that I cannot pass them over 

 here without some words of explanation. These 

 are the umbel and the head, both of frequent oc- 

 currence. An umbel is a cluster in which the 

 flowers, standing on separate stalks, reach at last 

 the same level, so as to form a flat-topped mass. 



