Fragments of the Flower Biology of Westralian 
Plants. 
BY 
OSWALD H. SARGENT. 
D URING the past twelve years I have paid special attention to the 
floral biology of just a few of the multitude of species constituting 
the flora of Western Australia. It is proposed in the present paper to state 
briefly the conclusions reached, and incidentally record a few isolated scraps 
of information that otherwise might not see the light. It seems most con¬ 
venient to group the facts under the heads of pollination agents, commenc¬ 
ing with 
Ornithophilous Flowers. 
These are placed first because I have come to look upon birds as the 
most important agents of pollination in this country. Many flowers which at 
first struck me as entomophilous have on further investigation appeared to 
be specially adapted for birds. Observations of the habits of honey-eating 
birds have led me to think it possible (indeed even probable) that adapta¬ 
tion of the flower to their requirements is the price of the plant species’ life. 
Not so much because of the advantages of ornithophily ; but rather because 
of the disadvantages of any other course. Honey-eaters are aggressive, and 
if a flower’s store of nectar is not readily available they rip open the blossom 
to secure it. Nectar need not be particularly copious to attract birds ; and 
I have seen the corollas of several cultivated plants badly damaged by them. 
It is of interest that species of Ei'ica and Arbutus suffer severely, My 
observations lead me to conclude that in order to escape the attentions of 
birds a flower must be nectarless or nearly so, or so situate on the plant as 
to be practically inaccessible to birds. I do not wish to argue that ornitho¬ 
phily is not directly advantageous ; but simply to state that I have not seen 
unequivocal evidence of its positive advantages, though I have seen much 
of the negative. To state the matter in another way, the impression left 
is : given a species with varying forms of flower, one extreme form being 
best adapted to insects and another to birds, the latter will survive, because 
the birds will so injure the former that few will secure pollination. The 
one point that has struck me as possibly of direct advantage is the relative 
simplicity of structure adequate to secure pollination when birds are the 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XXXII. No. CXXVJ. April, 19x8*] 
