Wild-Flower Study 



541 



pairs ; if one pair points east and west, the pair above and the pair 

 below point north and south. The leaf is beautiful in every particular; 

 it has a dark green upper surface, diversified with veins that join in 

 scallops near the border; it is soft to the touch on the upper surface, 

 and is velvety below. The lens reveals that the white under surface, 

 or the nap of the velvet, is a cover of fine white hairs. 



The flower of the milkweed is too complicated for little folks even to 

 try to understand; but for the pupils of the seventh and eighth grades 

 it will prove an interesting subject for investigation, if they study it 

 with the help of a lens. In examining the globular bud, we see the five 

 hairy sepals, which are later hidden by the five long, pinkish green petals 

 which bend back around the stem. When we look into the flower, we 

 see five little cornucopias — which are really horns of plenty, since 

 they are filled with nectar; from the center of each is a little, fleshy 

 tongue, with its curved point resting on the disk at the center of the 

 flower. Between each two of these nectar-horns can be seen the 

 white bordered opening of a long pocket — like a dress-pocket — at 

 the upper end of the opening of which is a black dot. Slip a needle into 

 the pocket opening until it pushes against the black dot, and out pops a 

 pair of yellow saddle-bags, each attached to the black dot which joins 

 them. These are the pollen-bags, and each was borne in a sac, shaped 

 like a vest-pocket, one lying either side of the upper end of the long 

 pocket. These pollen-bags are sticky, and they contract so as to close 

 over the feet of the visiting bee. 



Since the stem of the flower cluster droops 

 and each flower pedicel droops, the bee is 

 obliged to cling, hanging back down, while get- 

 ting the nectar, and has to turn about as if on a 

 pivot in order to thrust her tongue into the five 

 cornucopias in succession; she is then certain to 

 thrust her claws into a long pocket, and 

 it proceeds to close upon them, its edges 

 being like the jaws of a trap. The bee, in 

 trying to extricate her feet, leaves whatever 

 pollen-bags she had inadvertently gathered 

 in this trap-pocket, which gives them pass- 

 age to the stigma. But the milkweed flower, 

 like some folks, is likely to overdo matters, and 

 sometimes these pockets grasp too firmly the 

 legs of the bee and hold her a prisoner. We often 

 find insects thus caught and dead — a result as 

 far from the plan of the flower as from that of the 

 insect victim, had both been conscious. Some- 

 times bees become so covered with these pollen- 

 bags, which they are unable to scrape off, that 

 they die because of the clogging. But for one 

 bee that suffers there are thousands that carry 

 off the nectar triumphantly, just as thousands of 

 people travel by water for one that is drowned. 

 The milkweed pod has been the admiration of 

 nature students from the beginning, and surely 

 there is no plant structure that so interests the 



enlarged. 

 a,a, 



, Milkweed flower 

 2, Same moreen, 

 nectar-horns; p, pocket; 0,0, 

 openings to the pocket; s, 

 pollen-bags in place; s', 

 pollen-bags removed. 



