How Flowers Work And What They Do 
AS the spring has really come at last, we will begin 
our excursions in search of our old friends, the 
wild flowers, and see what new acquaintances we 
can make this season. 
But in order to make our studies truly profitable we 
must not be satisfied merely to know what the flowers 
are, but must also at the same time try t<i find out what 
thev do, writes H. \Y. Faulkner, in The Guide to Xaturc. 
Flowers are not merely beautiful living creatures ; they 
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Courtesy of The Guide to Nature. 
are also exquisite and wonderful mechanisms whose 
workings are most interesting. Their mechanisms are 
for the making of seeds or for their distribution. Now 
in the making of seeds two substances must combine. 
Just as in chemistry two chemical substance; must com- 
bine to form a crystal, so in botany two vegetable sub- 
stances, the pollen and the ovule, must combine to form 
a seed which shall live and grow. The pollen, as we all 
know, is a yellow powder, and the ovule is like a little 
green bead. The pollen is produced by little bags or an- 
thers on a long, slender filament ; the two being the 
"stamen." The ovule is formed and concealed in a green 
vase, the "pistil," with a long neck, the "style," opening 
at the top in the "stigma." 
The pollen is carried from the anthers to the stigma 
by various agencies, such as the wind, the bees and 
the birds, but it has been found that it is better for the 
race of plants to have the pollen carried from the anthers 
of one flower to the stigma of another, for this makes the 
young seedlings more robust and better able to fight the 
struggle for existence. This shifting of the pollen from 
flower to flower is known as cross-fertilization, or cross- 
pollination, and Dame Nature takes the greatest pains to 
make sure that the pollen is crossed. She invents the 
most ingenious mechanisms for the purpose, employs 
insects of every variety, lures them with every charm of 
color, odor and nectar, and takes advantage of each one 
of their peculiar habits and tricks to make them work for 
the good of the flowers. But there are very few books 
which tell us anything about the strange mechanisms of 
flowers and the habits of the insects which visit them. 
The botanies seem to confine themselves to the mere 
recognizing and classifying of our flowers, treating them 
as specimens, not a; living creatures, with schemes and 
ambitions. Yet the subject is so full of interest that I 
hope my readers will accompany me in many excursions 
ORCHIS SPECTflBILlS 
this summer and will question a host of our native flow- 
ers as to those schemes and ambitions and try to find out 
the secrets of their lives. 
It is always fun to collect something, such as stamps, 
coins, postcards or dried flowers. But let us begin a new 
kind of collection — one composed of the mechanism of 
the flowers. This will consist of sketches of the various 
parts, showing how they work, and before the season is 
over we shall have a line of inventions and discoveries 
to rival the Patent Office. We shall find the stamens and 
pistils of our plants exhibiting extraordinary variety and 
modifications, and will discover that each grotesque twist 
243 
