"Blossom Hosts and Insect Guests 



reference to the milkweed ! She says, in plainest 

 terms, " Your pollen must be removed on the leg 

 of an insect, preferably a bee, or your kind shall 

 perish from the face of the earth." And what is 

 the deep-laid plan by which this end is assured ? 

 My specimens here on the desk will disclose it all. 

 Here are two bees, a fly, and a beetle, each hang- 

 ing dead by its legs from a flower, an extreme sac- 

 rificial penalty, which is singularly frequent, but 

 which was certainly not exacted nor contemplated in 

 the design of the flower. A careful search among 

 almost any good-sized cluster of milkweeds will 

 show us many such prisoners. As in all flowers, the 

 pollen of the milkweed blossom must come in con- 

 tact with its stigma before fruition is possible. In 

 this peculiar family of plants, however, the pollen 

 is distinct in character, and closely suggests the 

 orchids in its consistency and disposition. The 

 yellow powdery substance with which we are all 

 familiar in ordinary flowers is here absent, the pollen 

 being collected in two club-shaped or, more prop- 

 erly, spatula-shaped masses, linked in pairs at their 

 slender prolonged tips, each of which terminates in 

 a sticky disk-shaped appendage united in V-shape 

 below. These pollen masses are concealed in 

 pockets (B) around the cylindrical centre of the 



