HOW FLOWERS CLUB TOGETHEE. 151 



ivy and garlic. A head, again, is a cluster in 

 which the individual flowers are set close on 

 very short stalks or none at all in a round ball 

 or a circle. Clover and scabious are excellent 

 examples of this sort of co-operation. 



If you examine a head of common white Dutch 

 clover (Fig. 32, iii.), you will see for yourself 

 that it is not, as you might suppose, a single 

 flower, but a thick mass of small white pea-like 

 blossoms, each on a stalk of its own, and each 

 provided with calyx, corolla, stamens, and 

 pistil. They are fertilised by bees ; and as soon 

 as the bee has impregnated each blossom, it 

 turns down and closes over, so as to warn the 

 future visitor that he has nothing to expect 

 there. The flowers open from below and with- 

 out, upward and inward ; and there is always a 

 broad line between the rifled and fertilised 

 flowers, which hang down as if retired from 

 business, and tii.e fresh and upstanding virgin 

 blossoms, which court the bees with their bright 

 corollas. Sometimes you will find a head of 

 clover in which all the flowers save one have 

 already been fertilised ; and this one, a solitary 

 old maid as it were, stands up in the centre still 

 waiting for the bees to come and fertilise it. 



By far the most interesting form of head, 

 however, is that which occurs in the daisy, the 

 sunflower, the dandelion, and their allies, where 

 the club or co-operative society of united blos- 

 soms so closely simulates a single flower as to 

 be universally mistaken for one by all but 

 botanical observers. To the world at large a 

 daisy or a dahlia is simply a flower ; in reality 



