580 Handbook of Nature-Study 



know that the pollen was on her back, and it was comical to see her 

 contortions to get it off. The action of these bumblebees in these flowers 

 is in marked contrast to those of the large bumblebees and the honey- 

 bees. One medium-sized species of bumblebee has learned the trick of 

 embracing with the front legs the narrow, stilf portion of the petals which 

 encircles the opening to the sac, thus holding the flower firm while 

 thrusting the head into the sac. While the huge species— black with very 

 yellow plush — does not attempt to get the nectar in a legitimate manner, 

 but systematically alights, back downward, below the sac of the flower, 

 with head toward the curved spur, and cuts open the sac for the nectar. 

 A nectar-robber of the most pronounced type! The honey-bees, Italian 

 hybrids, are the most awkward in their attempts to get nectar from these 

 flowers ; they attempt to alight on the expanded portion of the petals and 

 almost invariably slide off between the two petals. They then circle 

 around and take observations with a note of determination in their 

 buzzing, and finally succeed, as a rule, in gaining a foothold and securing 

 the nectar. But the midget bumblebees show a s avoir fair e in probing 

 the orange jewelweed that is convincing; they are so small that they are 

 quite out of sight when in the nectar-sacs. 



The jewelweed flowers of the pale species and the pale flowers of the 

 orange species — for this latter has sometimes pale yellow flowers — are not 

 invariably marked with freckles in the nectar-sac. But the most common 

 forms are thus speckled. There is something particularly seductive to 

 insects in these brownish or reddish flecks, and wherever we find them in 

 flowers, we may with some confidence watch for the insects they were 

 meant to allure. The orange jewelweed flower is a model for an artist in 

 its strange, graceful form and its color combination of yellow spotted and 

 marbled with red. 



Gray's Manual states that in the jewelweeds are often flowers of two 

 sorts "The large ones which seldom ripen seeds, and very small ones 

 which are fertilized early in the bud, their floral envelopes never expand- 

 ing but forced off by the growing pod and carried upward on its apex." 

 My jewelweed patch has not given me the pleasure of observing these two 

 kinds of flowers; my plants blossom luxuriously and profusely, and a 

 large proportion of the flowers develop seed. The little, straight, elon- 

 gated seed-pods are striped prettily and become quite plump from the 

 large seeds within them. Impatiens? We should say so! This pod 

 which looks so smug and straight-laced that we should never suspect it of 

 being so touchy, at the slightest jar when it is ripe, splits lengthwise into 

 five ribbon-like parts, all of which tear loose at the lower end and fly up 

 in spirals around what was once the tip of the pod, but which now looks 

 like a crazy little turbine wheel with five arms. And meanwhile, through 

 this act the fat, wrinkled seeds have been flung, perhaps several feet away 

 from the parent plant, and presumably to some congenial place for growth 

 the following spring. This surprising method of throwing its seeds is the 

 origin of the popular name touch-me-not, and the scientific name Im- 

 patiens by which these plants are known. 



The jewelweed has other names — celandine and silver-leaf, and ladies' 

 ear-drop. It is an annual with a slight and surface-spreading growth of 

 roots, seeming scarcely strong enough to anchor the branching stems, did 

 not the plants have the habit of growing in a community, each helping to 

 support its neighbor. The stem is round, hollow and much swollen at the 



