

WILD FLOWERS 



Flowering plants are numbered by the thousands; conse- 

 quently in the book we are able to include only some of the 

 more important and most beautiful species. There are all 

 kinds of plants, some good and some useless. Some furnish 

 foods, others are of great value medicinally, still others 

 furnish coloring matter for dyes, and quantities of them 

 have a large aesthetic value; on the other hand many are 

 poisonous, some deadly so, and quantities are absolutely use- 

 less weeds that spring up readily and in great quantities to 

 the detriment of agricultural products. 



Most species that bear conspicuous flowers do so for their 

 own good and not simply to look pretty. They are designed 

 to attract certain insects that are necessary or useful to 

 assist them in setting seed. As will be seen in the illustra- 

 tion on the following page, flowers have stamens and pis- 

 tils, the tips of the former bearing anthers containing pollen 

 grains and the end of the latter, called the stigma, being 

 sticky and connecting through a slender tube through the 

 style to the ovary in the basal portion. In order that seed 

 may set, it is necessary that pollen should come in contact 

 with the stigma. If seed was always set by pollen from the 

 same flower, the continuous inbreeding would in time cause 

 the species to degenerate. To prevent this, many plants are 

 incapable of setting seed unless pollen is brought from 

 some other flower. Insects are the chief agents for per- 

 forming this duty and a great many ingenious devices force 

 them to do so if they wish to partake of the nectar that the 

 flowers provide as compensation for their services. No 

 branch of science offers a wider field or a more interesting- 

 one than the methods of plant reproduction. 



Just as interesting are the many devices intended to pre- 

 vent useless insects from pilfering the nectar, such as hairy 

 or sticky sterrs or parts to prevent crawling insects from 

 reaching the flowers, long nectar tubes within which short- 

 & tongued flies and bees csnnot reach, etc. 



