COMPOSITAE 6ii 



1450. A. campestris L. — 



Visitors. — Rossler records the following Lepidoptera for Wiesbaden, but 

 makes no reference to the object of their visits. — 



I. Conchylis dipoltella Hb. ; 2. Crambus alpinellus Hb. ; 3. Eurycreon turbidalis 

 Tr. ; 4. Grapholitha lactaena Tr. 



451. Cotula L. 



Heads golden-yellow in colour, solitary. Ray-florets female, barren, with inflated 

 corolla-tube : disk-florets hermaphrodite, with 4-toothed limb to corolla. 



1451- C. coronopifolia L. (Roth, Bot. Jahrb., Leipzig, v, 1884.) — Roth, at 

 Liitjenburg (Holstein), repeatedly endeavoured to observe insects pollinating the 

 florets, but never succeeded in doing so. The heads, though crowded together, are 

 not at all conspicuous ; besides which they are odourless, and appear to produce 

 scarcely any nectar. Roth suggests that perhaps some suitable insect, absent from 

 our area, may be found in California, which would account for the rapid spread of 

 the species there, and its almost stationary condition in the far North of Europe. 

 This idea does not appear to me to be supported by the facts, for nectar is secreted 

 at no great depth, and therefore accessible to most of our flower-visiting insects. The 

 case is one of insufiicient observation. 



452. Ammobium R. Br. 



1452. A. alatum R. Br. — 



Visitors. — I observed the beetle Coccinella quattuordecimpunctata Z., occasional, 

 in the Kiel Botanic Garden. 



453. Achillea L. 



Gynomonoecious. Heads small. Ray-florets female, white (rarely rose-coloured), 

 with rounded tongue, style devoid of sweeping-hairs. Disk-florets usually yellowish 

 and hermaphrodite ; style with diverging sweeping-hairs at the tip, and two bands of 

 stigmatic papillae, separated by a median space, internally. 



1453. A. Millefolium L. (Herm. MuUer, 'Fertilisation,' pp. 325-7, 'Alpen- 

 blumen, p. 428, ' Weit. Beob.,' Ill, p. 84 ; Lindman, ' Bidrag till Kanned. om Skandin. 

 Fjellvaxt. Blomn. o. Befrukt.'; Knuth, 'Bl. u. Insekt. a. d. nordfr. Ins.,' pp. 90, 

 157-8, 'Weit. Beob. ii. Bl. u. Insekt. a. d. nordfr. Ins.,' p. 236; Verhoeif, 'Bl. u. 

 Insekt. a. d. Ins. Norderney' ; Heinsius, Bot. Jaarb. Dodonaea, Ghent, iii, 1891, p. 363, 

 V, 1893, pp. 421-3; Loew, 'Bliitenbiol. Floristik,' pp. 390, 395.) — In this species 

 a large number of heads (often over 100) are arranged in a corymbose manner, thus 

 giving a continuous flat surface. Not only is the plant thus rendered conspicuous, 

 but a single visitor may pollinate numerous florets. Insects can pass from one head 

 to another, using the contiguous ligulate ray-florets as bridges, without having to fly. 



Hermann Miiller states that a head contains about 20 disk-florets, with corolla- 

 tubes hardly 2 mm. long, and expanding into nectar-containing bells about i mm. 

 in length. The two stylar branches are closely apposed when the floret opens, and 

 are situated in the lowest part of the anther-cylinder, through which they grow, 

 pushing the pollen before them by means of the sweeping-hairs. They then diverge, 



R r 2 



