BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN 
LEAFLETS 
Series IX Brooklyn, N. Y., May 4, 1921. Nos. 3 and 4 
THE POLLINATION OF FLOWERS 
"In all places, then, and in all seasons. 
Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings. 
Teaching us. by most persuasive reasons, 
How akin they are to human things.” 
—Longfellow. 
” The play of stamens and pistil, the seduction of 
perfumes, the appeal of harmonious and dazzling 
colours, the concoction of nectar, * * * —that is 
to bring to the flower the kiss of the distant, 
invisible, motionless lover.” 
—Maeterlinck. 
The story of pollination in flowers is a part of the story of 
sex in plants— a story that began with the first primitive green 
thing that grew in the ancient seas. Millions of years have 
passed since then — a period of time as vast and as inconceivable 
as the spans of space that separate the stars. Flowering plants, 
so those who study the rock-written pages of the earth tell us, 
began somewhere around five million years after the great, 
gloomy fern and club moss forests that gave us our coal, had 
passed away. That period was a momentous one for the human 
race, although even the remotest hint of the coming of man was 
not yet apparent. The Appalachians, of which the Palisades and 
Orange Mountains are a part, were new then. The Rocky Moun- 
tains still slumbered beneath oceans of water and stretches of 
undulating plains. Our mammalian or milk-giving ancestors 
were extremely insignificant, and mostly lived as small animals 
in the trees. Reptilian monsters of enormous size dominated air, 
land and water. The sequoias, now represented only by the red- 
wood forests of our Pacific coast and the “ Big Trees,” were 
scattered broadcast over the northern hemisphere — perhaps as 
plentiful as the pines are to-day. In all probability, the first 
flowering plants were semi-aquatic, marsh-like beings— one foot 
on land, and one in water— insignificant, humble individuals with 
net-veined leaves and very inconspicuous, comparatively scent- 
less flowers— giving no clue of the immense dormant potentialities 
that later expressed themselves as we know them, — giving no 
hint of the gorgeous colors, of the marvelous diversities of form 
