196 



FARM FRIENDS AND FARM FOES 



Cucumber: Pollen 

 BEARING Flower 



cells for each style and stigma. You should see the in- 

 teresting nectar cup on the top of the ovary, on which 

 glistening drops of nectar may generally be found. 



Squash Blossoms 



People are sometimes puzzled over the fact that cucum- 

 bers and squashes seem to have so many blossoms in pro- 

 portion to the number of fruits produced. 

 If you examine, however, the flowers 

 upon one of these plants, you will soon 

 be able to tell the reason for this. You 

 will find that most of the flowers consist 

 only of sepals, petals, and stamens, and 

 that such flowers are easily recognized 

 from a side view, by the fact that there 

 is below the blossom no little cucumber 

 or squash to develop later into a fruit. 

 These flowers are stamen-bearing or stam- 

 inate blossoms, and in general they are 

 smaller than the other kind of flowers 

 found upon the same plants, which con- 

 sist of sepals, petals, and a single pistil. 

 The ovary of the pistil which you will 

 recognize at once as a miniature cu- 

 cumber or squash is below the main blossom, but has a 

 style that runs up through the center of the flower and 

 bears upon its tip a well-developed stigma. These are the 

 seed-bearing or pistillate flowers. 



If you should cut open the ovary of one of these pistillate 

 flowers, you would find inside a large number of tiny seed- 

 Uke bodies called the ovules. In order that these ovules 

 may develop into seeds, it is necessary that some pollen 

 from the staminate blossoms should be placed upon the 



CucDMBER : Seed- 

 bearing Flower 



