Magenta to Pink 



adapted, require a firmer support than the petals would give, and 

 so alight on the centre of the flower, where the pistil receives 

 pollen carried by them from other roses. Although the numer- 

 ous stamens and the pistils mature simultaneously, the former are 

 usually turned outward, that the incoming pollen-laden insect may 

 strike the stigma first. When the large bees cease their visits, as 

 they may in long-continued dull or rainy weather, the rose, turn- 

 ing toward the sun, stands more or less obliquely, and some of 

 the pollen must fall on its stigma. Occasional self-fertilization 

 matters little. 



If plants have insect benefactors, they have their foes as well ; 

 and hordes of tiny aphides, commonly known as green flies or 

 plant lice, moored by their sucking tubes to the tender sprays of 

 roses, wild and cultivated, live by extracting their juices. A 

 curious relationship exists between these liftle creatures and the 

 ants, which "milk" them by stroking and caressing them with 

 their antennae until they emit a tiny drop of sweet, white fluid. The 

 yellow ant, that lives an almost subterranean life, actually domes- 

 ticates flocks and herds of root-feeding aphides ; the brown ant 

 appropriates those that live among the bark of trees ; and the 

 common black garden ant (Lasius ii/'ger), devoting itself to the 

 aphis of the rose bushes, protects it in extraordinary ways, delight- 

 fully described by the author of " Ants, Bees, and Wasps." 



In literature, ancient and modern, sacred and profane, no 

 flower figures so conspicuously as the rose. To the Romans it 

 was most significant when placed over the door of a public or 

 private banquet hall. Each who passed beneath it bound himself 

 thereby not to disclose anything said or done within ; hence the 

 expression sub rosa, common to this day. 



The Prairie, Climbing, or Michigan Rose (/?. setigcra) lifts 

 clusters of deep, bright pink flowers, that after a while fade 

 almost white, above the thickets and rich prairie soil, from southern 

 Ontario and Wisconsin to the Gulf, as far eastward as Florida. 

 Its distinguishing characteristics are : Stout, widely separated 

 prickles along the stem, that grows several feet long ; leaves com- 

 pounded of three, rarely five, oval leaflets, acute or obtuse at the 

 apex ; stalks and calyx often glandular ; odorless flowers that, 

 opening in June and July, measure about two and a half inches 

 across, their styles cohering in a smooth column on which bees 

 are tempted to alight ; and a round hip, or seed vessel, formed by 

 the fruiting calyx, which is more or less glandular. From this 

 parent stock several valuable double-flowering roses have been 

 derived, among others the Queen and the Gem of the Prairies, 

 but it is our only native rose that has ever passed into cultivation. 



The Smooth, Early, or Meadow Rose (R. b/ainia), found 

 blooming in June and July in moist, rocky places from Newfound- 

 land to New Jersey and a thousand miles westward, has a trifle 



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