THE VISITORS OF THE CAPRIFOLIACE&., 
JOHN H. LOVELL. 
Tue Caprifoliacez, or honeysuckle family, are remarkable for 
the variation in length of the corolla tube and the consequent 
adaptation of the flowers to a great variety of visitors. The 
wheel-shaped flowers of Sambucus contain no honey and are 
sparingly visited by flies and pollen-collecting bees; Viburnum, 
which has also a rotate corolla but secretes nectar, attracts a 
wide circle of bees, flies, beetles, and Lepidoptera; the corolla 
of Symphoricarpos is bell-shaped and visited chiefly by wasps ; 
the funnel-formed flower of Linnzea is adapted to slender flies ; 
Lonicera alpigena is a wasp flower ; a part of the species of 
Lonicera are visited by bees in general, while others are polli- 
nated only by bumblebees; L. caprifolium and L. periclymenum 
are nocturnal flowers fertilized by hawk moths; and L. semper- 
virens is pollinated by humming birds. 
There are about 260 species widely distributed throughout 
the northern hemisphere and blooming in spring and midsum- 
mer. A few occur in South America and Australia. Their 
northern distribution, as well as the occurrence of fossil forms, 
indicates their origin in the north temperate zone. Viburnum 
is found in the Dakota group, which, according to Saporta and 
Marion, belonged to a woody and mountainous region, popu- 
lated by such genera as Salix, Fagus, Populus, and Platanus, and 
from which southern types, especially the palms, are absent. 
Sambucus L. 
The flowers attract very few visitors, as they contain no nectar. 
Sambucus pubens Michx. Red-berried Elder. 
The flower buds are at first green, changing to purplish, and 
finally, on expanding, to white. Cymes thyrsoid, longer than 
road. 
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