The Yellow Flag 



this is the point destined to receive fertilising pollen. 

 In this flower honey is' contained in canals on the 

 inner side (towards the base) of the small, erect 

 petals, and out of these it exudes and lies round 

 the ovary in the heart of the flower. 



Now apparently the Yellow Flag lays itself out 

 to receive two kinds of insect visitors. Firstly 

 bees, secondly the long-tongued hover-fly — Rhingia 

 rosfrata — and it is sometimes asserted that two 

 modifications of the flower may be met with accord- 

 ing as the plant caters for one or other of these 

 visitors. When, say, one of the big humble bees 

 approaches and makes for the honey, it must needs 

 settle on a drooping sepal. It pushes down between 

 the over-arching stigma roof and the sepal floor, 

 and necessarily rubs its great back on the stamen 

 lying almost in the roof. But as it pushes in it 

 rubs first on the receptive scale, and if its back is 

 at all dusty when it arrives it must rub a little of 

 this dust on to it. And then it rubs on the stamen. 

 Now in this case the stamen-head has its 



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