Crocuses 31 
ensure enough for Nature’s needs, after a large 
proportion has been blown or washed away. 
The wind-fertilized flowers of the poplar shed so 
much pollen that it may be seen, on breezy spring 
days, blowing from the branches in light clouds. 
And at one time in the summer the floating pollen 
of the eel-grass, and of some other pond weeds, is 
spread in sheets over the surface of still. water. 
It has been shed by those aquatic flowers which 
blow at the surface of the water. There are other 
aquatic blossoms which expand beneath the sur- 
face. Their pollen grains are of much the same 
weight, bulk for bulk, as the surrounding water, 
so that they will neither float nor sink, but will 
remain poised at about the level of the flower 
they seek. And the individual pollen grains of 
such blossoms are often long and narrow in form, 
so that they cut their way through the water, as 
does a modern ocean greyhound. 
Wind-fertilized flowers are adapted in various ways 
to their chosen assistants, the breezes. They have, 
for the most part, enormously developed stigmas, 
which project in the form of tails or brushes. The 
pollen of such flowers is light and dry, that it may 
blow easily, and the brush-like stigmas are covered 
with points or hairs which catch it as it flies past. 
