AMONG THE WILD FLOWERS 27 



never opens; it always remains a closed bud. I 

 used to think that this gentian could never experi- 

 ence the benefits of insect visits, which Darwin 

 showed us were of such importance in the vegetable 

 world. I once plucked one of the flowers into which 

 a bumblebee had forced his way, but he had never 

 come out; the flower was his tomb. 



I am assured, however, by recent observers, that 

 the bumblebee does successfully enter the closed 

 corolla, and thus distribute its pollen.-^ 



There is yet another curious exception which I 

 will mention, namely, the witch-hazel. All our 

 trees and plants bloom in the spring, except this 

 one species; this blooms in the fall. Just as its 

 leaves are fading and falling, its flowers appear, 

 giving out an odor along the bushy lanes and mar- 

 gins of the woods that is to the nose like cool water 

 to the hand. Why it should bloom in the fall in- 

 stead of in the spring is a mystery. And it is 

 probably because of this very curious trait that its 

 branches are used as divining-rods, by certain cred- 

 ulous persons, to point out where springs of water 

 and precious metals are hidden. 



1 "A bumblebee came along and lit upon a cluster of asters. 

 Leaving these, it next visited a head of gentians, and with some 

 difficulty thrust its tongue through the valves of the nearest 

 blossom; then it pushed in its head and body until only the hind 

 legs and the tip of the abdomen were sticking out. In this 

 position it made the circuit of the blossom, and then emerged, 

 resting a moment to brush the pollen from its head and thorax 

 into the pollen-baskets, before flying again to a neighboring aster. 

 The whole process required about twenty seconds." Ten Nexo 

 England Blossoms and their Insect Visitors, Clarence Moores 

 Weed, pp. 93, 94. 



