86 FAMILIAR FLOWERS OF FIELD AND GARDEN. 



It certainly will not endure tlie savage violence of 

 a New England coast climate ; it prefers the equa- 

 ble temperature of the pine district of New Jer- 

 sey. In some parts of the latter State the bushes grow 

 to a height of ten feet or more, and in the mountains 

 of Pennsylvania they grow fully twenty feet high. 

 The perfect, waxlike flower is arranged on the plan 

 of a wheel, with the stamens represent- 

 ing the spokes; these are arched, and 

 are so elastic that when the tips are re- 

 leased from the little notch in the corolla 

 (the anther is held there temporarily) 

 tlie pollen is fired right or left, as a boy would sling 

 a green apple from the sharpened end of a supple 

 stick ; this is an ingenious bit of Nature's artifice 

 by -w^liich she secures cross-fertilization. Of course, 

 a visiting insect experiences a perfect bombardment 

 of yellow pollen when it alights on a flower, occa- 

 sioned by its walking on the stamens and knock- 

 ing them out of place; then, powdered over like a 

 dusty miller, it visits another flower, and Nature's 

 little scheme is carried out to perfection ! It is 

 worth while to spend a few minutes in a garden 

 watching a clumsy bumblebee ; the process of pollen 

 transfer will then be easily understood. As a boy, 

 I found it amusing to liberate the stamens of a Kal- 

 mia blossom with the point of a pin, and watch the 



