Magenta to Pink 



eating embrace is akin to tine morning-glory of tine garden trellis 

 (C. major). An ex'ceedingly rapid climber, the twining stem often 

 describes a complete circle in two hours, turning against the sun, 

 or just contrary to the hands of a watch. Late in the season, 

 when an abundance of seed has been set, the flower can well 

 afford to keep open longer hours, also in rainy weather ; but early 

 in the summer, at least, it must attend to business only while the 

 sun shines and its benefactors are flying. Usually it closes at 

 sundown. On moonlight nights, however, the hospitable blossom 

 keeps open for the benefit of certain moths. In Europe the plant's 

 range is supposed to be limited to that of a crepuscular moth 

 {Sphinx coiivolviili), and where that benefactor is rare, as in 

 England, the bindweed sets few seeds ; where it does not occur, 

 as in Scotland, this convolvulus is seldom found wild ; whereas 

 in Italy Delpino tells of catching numbers of the moths in hedges 

 overgrown with the common plant, by standing with thumb and 

 forefinger over a flower, ready to close it when the insect has 

 entered. We know that every floral clock is regulated by the 

 hours of flight of its insect friends. When they have retired, the 

 flowers close to protect nectar and pollen from useless pilferers. 

 In this country various species of bees chiefly fertilize the bind- 

 weed blossoms. Guided by the white streaks, or pathfinders, they 

 crawl into the deep tube and sip through one of the five narrow 

 passages leading to the nectary. A transverse section of the 

 flower cut to show these five passages standing in a circle around 

 the central ovary looks like the end of a five-barrelled revolver. 

 Insects without a suitably long proboscis are, of course, excluded 

 by this arrangement. 



From July until hard frost look for that exquisite little beetle, 

 Cassida auriLhahwh like a drop of molten gold, clinging beneath 

 the bindweed's leaves. The small perforations reveal his hiding 

 places. " But you must be quick if you would capture him," 

 says William Hamilton Gibson, "for he is off in a spangling 

 streak of glitter. Nor is this golden sheen all the resource of the 

 little insect ; for in the space of a few seconds, as you hold him 

 in your hand, he has become a milky, iridescent opal, and now 

 mother-of-pearl, and finally crawls before you in a coat of dull 

 orange." A dead beetle loses all this wonderful lustre. Even on 

 the morning-glory in our gardens we may sometimes find these 

 jewelled mites, or their fork-tailed, black larvs. or the tiny chrysa- 

 lids suspended by their tails, although it is the wild bindweed that 

 is ever their favorite abiding place. 



The small Field Bindweed (C. arvensis), a common immi- 

 grant from Europe, which has taken up its abode from Nova 

 Scotia and Ontario southward to New Jersey, and westward to 

 Kansas, trails over the ground with a deathless persistency which 



140 



