Wild Flowers as They Grow 



usual thing.) A bountiful measure of honey is 



stored in a fleshy ring just below the stamens, and 



is quite accessible to insects with short as well as 



long probosces. Therefore, the Bramble has a 



perfect host of visitors of all sorts— .as many as a 



hundred different ones having been counted. The 



outer ring of stamens shed their pollen first and 



turn their faces up ; the stigmas are ripe at the 



same time, but with so many visitors foraging 



among the stamens for honey and pollen the flower 



usually gets cross-fertilised before the inner stamens 



pour out their pollen in close proximity to the 



receptive columns of the carpels. This cross-fertiU- 



sation is expedited by the fact that a bee in settling 



on a Bramble flower necessarily chooses the central, 



stronger part — the carpels — as his ahghting place. 



And so we come to the fruit — and, after aU, in 



the Blackberry Bramble " the fruit's the thing." 



Again we notice how variously the members of the 



rose family, all with flowers of a similar type, go 



to work when it comes to fashioning fruit, for the 



96 



