CHAPTER XXXI 



POLLEN 



IN a few days, even in a few hours, a flower withers. 

 Petals, calyx, stamens fade and die. Only one 

 part survives: the ovary, which is to become fruit. 

 Now, in order to outlive the rest of the flower and 

 remain on its stem when all else dries up and falls, 

 the ovary at the moment of blossoming, receives an 

 access of vigor, I might almost say a new life. The 

 magnificence of the corolla, its sumptuous coloring, 

 its perfume, all serve to celebrate the solemn moment 

 when this new vitality is awakened in the ovary. 

 This great act accomplished, the flower has had its 

 day. 



"Well, it is the dust of the stamens, the pollen, 

 that gives this increase of energy without which the 

 nascent seeds would perish in the ovary, itself 

 withered. It falls from the stamens on to the 

 stigma, which constantly wears a sticky coating de- 

 signed to hold it; and from the stigma it makes its 

 mysterious influence felt in the very depths of the 

 ovary. Animated then with new life, the nascent 

 seeds develop rapidly, while the ovary swells so as to 

 give them the nourishment and the space they re- 

 quire. The final result of this incomprehensible tra- 



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