honey, but a liquid with a sour-milk odor. The male and female 
parts of the flowers are so arranged that only cross-pollination 
is possible, and it has been assumed that when kangaroos stick 
their snouts into the cup to drink the liquid, their snouts become 
dusted with pollen, part of which they leave on the mature pistils 
of the next flower group they stop to drink at. 
But more remarkable still is the giant orchid of Madagascar, 
Ang+aecjivi sesquipedale with a nectar tube varying in length from 
one to two feet, concerning which Mr. Darwin speculated. There 
ought, he said, when he saw the flower and had examined it, to 
be a moth over th e re with a proboscis as long as this tube, for no 
insect without such a long sucking organ could possibly obtain 
the nectar at the base of the tube, and the flower would not be 
pollinated. Some years later Humboldt discovered just such a 
moth. The orchids have remarkable apparatuses designee for 
securing cross-pollination, but as these are often discussed 
and the literature is quite accessible, there is no need to go into 
it here. Suffice to say that anyone that is not interested in a 
plant that has an apparatus that will glue two bags of pollen 
packets securely to a nectar-hunting visitor’s feet, forehead, eye 
or back and send along another sort of glue that serves to assist 
in glueing a packet to the pistil of the next flower the visitor 
enters— is— well— overfed with movie stuff or- hopeless. 
Birds and bats, except for the hummingbirds, are rare agents in 
flower cross-pollination, but in South Africa exist the sun-birds — 
lovers of brown Melianthus honey. Melianthus produces so much 
honey that when you shake the flower clusters, it almost rains 
honey. The sun-birds, in sipping this honey from its cup-like 
receptacle, come in contact with the pollen sacks and their fore- 
heads are dusted, so that the next flower they sip from is cross- 
pollinated. 
As youngsters, we used to amuse ourselves with barberry 
flowers by touching their pollen sacks with a pin to see them 
“jump.” And that is what happens when the bee or other nec- 
tar hunting insect comes along and sticks its tongue or feet into 
the flower. For the stamen stalk, or filament, is smeared with 
honey, and as soon as the bee touches it— out it jumps, hitting him 
on the forehead and covering that part of him with pollen, some 
of which he leaves on the stigma of the next flower he visits. This 
same sort of thing happens in the flowers of the prickly pear 
cactus and the mountain laurel. 
Another thing I used to ponder over was why so many bugs, 
beetles and other insects were found on golden rod flowers at 
night, in the early morning, or on cloudy, damp fall days, espe- 
cially as these were the times when I could go flower-gathering 
and I did not appreciate their association. And a few years ago, 
I found out — from a book, of course. Golden rods are warmer 
and drier flowers at such times — their temperature is actually 
higher than the surrounding atmosphere, and that of many other 
sorts of fall-blooming flowers. So they furnish these insects, 
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