VOL. LIX— NO. 4 



HAMILTON, ILL., APRIL, 1919 



MONTHLY, $1.00 A YFAR 



THE BEE-FLOWERS OF NORTH AMERICA 



BY JOHN H. LOVELL 



Note. There are thousands of bee- 

 flowers which are not honey-plants, 

 and many honey-plants are not bee- 

 flowers, although the bees get honey 

 from them. This article endeavors 

 to make clear the importance of bees 

 to flowers. Bee-flowers are flowers 

 which are adapted to bees rather 

 than to other insects. When the au- 

 thor says that the blackberry is not 

 a bee-flower, he means that this plant 

 is not dependent upon bees, so long 

 as other insects are abundant. — Ed. 



IN the diverse, yet inseparably 

 united relations of nature, bees 

 play three very important roles, 

 as honey-makers, flower-makers and 

 fruit makers. As makers of honey 

 the habits and industry of the honey- 

 bee have excited wonder and admira- 

 tion for many years, but it is only 

 recently that their services in the 

 production of fruit have been appre- 

 ciated. Modern fruit culture is de- 

 pendent on bees. Many cultivated 

 fruits are self-sterile, and all appear 

 to yield better when cross-pollinated. 

 Every fruit plantation should have 

 its apiary. The service rendered by 

 bees (both social and solitary) to this 

 country annually in the pollination of 

 fruits and vegetables, buckwheat, 

 fodder plants and many flowers cer- 

 tainly exceeds in value $100,000,000, 

 in its widest sense, indeed, it is be- 

 yond price. 



There is not a person living who 

 comprehends what our flora would 

 be like, if there had been no bees. 

 They have been the unconscious 

 builders of thousands of bright-col- 

 ored, attractive blossoms. Alone 

 among insects they feed their brood 

 on pollen, and to store in their cells 

 a sufficient quantity of it requires 

 countless visits to the bloom of plants 

 throughout the entire season. It was 

 a momentous epoch in the world's 

 history when the ancestors of the 

 bees became flower visitors. These 

 primitive insects were wasp-like in 

 appearance, with smooth bodies and 



Fig. 1.— Gladiolus. A bumblebee flower 



short tongues. They tunneled in the 

 ground, as is still the habit of most 

 solitary bees; and, when they began 

 to provision their nests with balls 

 of pollen instead of dead insects, 

 the foundation was laid for the pros- 

 perity of the future race of bees, and 

 indirectly for a powerful influence on 

 mankind. 



While bees have been a more im- 

 portant factor in the development of 

 the majority of conspicuous flowers in 

 our flora than any other group of in- 

 sects, the effect of their visits is most 

 evident in bee-flowers. A bee-flower 

 has the nectar concealed and is, or 

 was, chiefly pollinated by bees, as 

 white and red clover, the mountain 

 laurel and the larkspur. 



Many of them are valuable honey- 

 plants; and. in showing us the ways 

 in which bees have modified flowers 

 in the past, they should teach us 

 some useful lessons in regard to the 

 possibilities of the future. 



A list of North American bee- 

 flowers shows that they are very 

 widely and unevenly distributed ill 

 i In different plant families. A great 

 family, as the pea, mint, or figwort 

 family, may consist almost entirely 

 of bee-flowers, while there may be 

 none, or only a few, in other large 

 families. There are no flowers 

 adapted to bees in the pink, mustard 

 or carrot families, and they are like- 

 wise absent from that immense 

 group, the Composite-, which con- 

 tains the asters, goldenrods and this- 

 tles. The inflorescence of this fam- 

 ily represents Nature's greatest 

 triumph in flower building, and is 

 well worthy of the careful considera- 

 tion of both beekeeper and botanist. 

 No other family contains so many 

 honey-plants. The individual flower 

 is of little significance, and conspicu- 

 ousness is gained by massing many of 

 them in a head, an arrangement which 

 permits insects to visit them very rap- 

 idly. Intercrossing, economy of time 

 and material, a large number of seeds 

 and their wide distribution have all 

 been perfectly attained. In this the 

 most successful of plant families 

 there is a large and varied com- 

 pany of visitors to the flowers and 

 little modification of the corolla, 

 just the opposite of conditions in the 

 orchis family, to which we shall re- 

 fer a little later. 



In order to obtain a clear under- 

 standing of bee-flowers it is neces- 

 sary to consider more in detail a few 

 of the common species. Let us be- 

 gin with the lily family, which con- 

 tains so many familiar field and gar- 

 den flowers, among which are the 

 bee-flowers, Solomon's seal. the 

 twisted stalk, grape hyacinth, lily-of- 

 the-valley, asparagus and squills. 

 The green tubular flowers of Solo- 

 mon's seal are pendulous and adapted 

 to bumblebees. The deep blue flow- 

 ers of the grape hyacinth (Muscari) 

 are urn-shaped, hang downward, and 

 bees gather the nectar from the ob- 

 long clusters, which resemble bunches 



