184 Our Field and Forest Trees 



bodies of these insect friends. The invitation 

 which the wild-cherries send to their messengers 

 is an odor, not very pleasing to our taste. It is 

 not meant to please our taste. The wild-cherry 

 blossoms and the flowers borne by the American 

 hawthorne are trying to attract their friends, the 

 flies, by breathing out this heavy scent. It is sweet 

 when it is blown to us across wide fields, but when 

 the flowers are brought indoors, their smell sug- 

 gests something stale or putrid. 



The chestnut blossoms offer another feast to 

 the flies, later, when cherries are nearly ripe, and 

 they attract their visitors by an odor very unpleas- 

 ing to many people. The chestnut bears two sorts 

 of flowers. There are long, creamy spikes on the 

 chestnut trees, covered with flowers which have 

 one work in life: to yield abundance of pollen. 

 After the insects have covered their bodies with 

 the yellow dust shed by these long blossom spikes, 

 they will fly, still seeking nectar, to shorter flower 

 spikes, growing at the ends of the chestnut boughs. 

 At the base of these short spikes are flowers which 

 have pistils but no stamens, and these ripen into 

 the chestnut burrs and their nuts. 



Flies can thrive far north, because their lives 

 are so brief that a very short summer is long 

 enough for them. So we find some fly-flowers — 

 haws, wild cherry, and mountain ash — growing 

 far northward into Canada. 



The trees which send their pollen from flower 



