ener. 
Vol. iN sy 10.] Notes on the Pollination of Flowers. 511 
63. Notes on the Pollination of Flowers in India, Note No. 1—The 
pollination of Thunbergia grandiflora, Rowb., in Calcutta,—By 
I. H. Burxitt. 
sion I pollinated some half dozen flowers with the pollen of fresh 
flowers (both of white and mauve races) brought from Shibpur. 
ay : 
\\ 
\ 
Nt 
’ 
Hallranne \ fl 
Fic. 1.—Flower of Thunbergia grandiflora, seen from in front 
and a little above. Nat. size. 
Stl 
The flowers of Thunbergia grandiflora in the hot weather and 
at least through August open in the night between 2-30 and 3-30 
a.M. (local time) ; but as the cold weather comes on, they delay 
opening until towards or after dawn, In the 
fall about 4 p.M., butin the cold weather they often do not fall 
until long after dark or on the next morning. They are obviously 
adapted for fertilisation by big bees such as Xylocopa, some of 
which are crepuscular in habit, and as Bingham 1 remarks (upon 
Xylocopa rufescens, & native of Sikkim, whence, with Assam, this 
white Thunbergia grandiflora comes) “ on fine moonlight nights the 
1 In Blanford’s Fauna of British India, Hymenoptera, Vol. I. (London,. 
1897), p. 534. 
