224 The Golden Rule for Flowers 



In one plant the anthers act like a pair of bellows, and 

 .on being touched blow their dust out upon the insect ; 

 in another — the Kalmia, or American mountain-laurel, 

 the stamens rise up from the petals on which they 

 usually lie flat, and close round the insect, clasping it 

 and impressing their pollen upon its body. 



But the various arrangements are so numerous that 

 it is impossible to do more here than give the merest 

 outline-sketch of them, and for fuller particulars the 

 reader must be referred elsewhere. 



We have confined our attention hitherto chiefly to 

 bees, because they are the most generally useful of 

 insects, and few flowers seem to come amiss to them 

 if only they can reach the nectar. But there are just a 

 few flowers which they actually avoid. Bees of all 

 kinds, for instance, shun the Crown-imperial, though it 

 blossoms in March and April, when bee food is not 

 plentiful. Gilbert White noticed a small bird like a 

 white-throat running up the stems of this plant and 

 plunging its head into the bells in search of nectar, so 

 it may be that it is fertilized in this way, for it certainly 

 sets seed. 



Other flowers disliked by bees are the passion-flower 

 and dahlia — which seem to stupefy and often kill them, 

 and, above all, the oleander, whose nectar is fatal. A 

 traveller in Hungary and Dalmatia, where the oleander 

 abounds, could not remember ever to have seen bee, 

 moth or butterfly visiting the blossoms. And yet their 

 bright rose-coloured petals seem to say, in the language 

 of flowers, that they need the help of insects, and 

 those, too, of a high order. 



For colours have much meaning in the flower Ian- 



