THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
VoL. xv. — APRIL, 1881. — No. 4. 
THE FERTILIZATION OF SALVIA SPLENDENS BY 
BIRDS} 
BY WILLIAM TRELEASE, 
N the fall of 1878, while studying the structure of various 
flowers, as correlated with the mode of their fertilization, I 
examined Salvia splendens Sellow,? a Brazilian species very com- 
monly cultivated for its large scarlet flowers. From the structure 
as then made out, I was partially convinced that I was not dealing 
with an entomophilous flower; but it was not until two years 
later that I had an opportunity to look into the matter any fur- 
ther, and I then became certain that the species was one of the 
more closely adapted ornithophilous plants. 
The flowers, arranged in a compound raceme, are placed hori- 
zontally or nearly so. Nectar, secreted by a large, lobed disk (7), as 
usual in the Labiata, accumulates in the basal part of the corolla, | 
and offers a considerable amount of tempting food to nectar-lov- 
ing creatures, and this, advertised by the brilliant scarlet of the 
calyx and corolla, clearly proclaims the flowers to be acophions, 
or adapted to fertilization by animals of some kind. 
The corolla is tubular, though somewhat laterally compressed, 
and reaches a length of not far from two inches. It possesses 
the bilabiate character which has given a name to the natural a oe 
1 Read before the Boston Society of Natural History, Feb. 2, 1881. 
? Professor F. Hildebrand, in his paper on the fertilization of Salvias by insects 
(Pringsheim’s Jahrb. wiss. Bot., 1865, Iv, p. 459, and Pl. 33, figs. $ and 9), describes 
and figures the floral structure of a species to which he gives this name, but which 
is quite different from that on which my observations were made, which, it may be 
added, has been found to agree with authentic specimens of x s. splendens i in the Gray 
Herbarium. 
VOL, XV.—NO. IV. 19 
