"All variations which render the blossoms more attractive, either by scent, color, size of corolla, or quantity of nectar, make the insect visit more sure, and therefore the production of seed more likely.Thus, the conspicuous blossoms secure descendants which inherit the special variations of their parents, and so, generation after generation, we have selections in favor of conspicuous flowers, where insects are at work.Their appreciation of color, because it has brought the blossom possessing it more immediately into their view, and more surely under their attention, has enabled them, through the ages, to be preparing the specimens upon which man now operates, he taking up the work where they have left it, selecting, inoculating, and hybridizing, according to his own rules of taste, and developing a beauty which insects alone could never have evolved.His are the finishing touches, his the apparent effects, yet no less is it true, that the results of his floriculture would never have been attainable without insect helpers.It is equally certain, that the beautiful perfume, and the nectar also, are, in their present development, the outcome of repeated insect selection, and here, it seems to me, we get an inkling of a deep mystery:
Why is life, in all its forms, so dependent upon the fusion of two individual elements? Is it not, that thus the door of progress has been opened? If each alone had reproduced, itself all-in-all, advance would have been impossible, the insect and human florists and pomologists, like the improvers of animal races, would have had no platform for their operation, and not only the forms of life, but life itself would have been stereotyped unalterably, ever mechanically giving repetition to identical phenomena." - Frank R.Cheshire in "Bees and Bee-keeping."YELLOW AND ORANGE FLOWERS
GOLDEN CLUB
(Orontium aquaticum) Arum family Flowers - Bright yellow, minute, perfect, crowded on a spadix (club) 1 to 2 in.long; the scape, 6 in.to 2 ft.tall, flattened just below it; the club much thickened in fruit.Leaves: All from root, petioled, oblong-elliptic, dull green above, pale underneath, 5 to 12 in.long, floating or erect.
Preferred Habitat - Shallow ponds, standing water, swamps.
Flowering Season - April-May.
Distribution - New England to the Gulf States, mostly near the coast.
A first cousin of cruel Jack-in-the-pulpit, the skunk cabbage, and the water-arum (q.v.), a poor relation also of the calla lily, the golden club seems to be denied part of its tribal inheritance - the spathe, corresponding to the pulpit in which Jack preaches, or to the lily's showy white skirt.In the tropics, where the lily grows, where insect life teems in myriads and myriads, and competition among the flowers for their visits is infinitely more keen than here, she has greater need to flaunt showy clothes to attract benefactors than her northern relatives.
But the golden club, which looks something like a calla stripped of her lovely white robe, has not lacked protection for its little buds from the cold spring winds while any was needed.By the time we notice the plant in bloom, however, its bract-like spathe has usually fallen away, as if conscious that the pretty mosaic club of golden florets, so attractive in itself, was quite able to draw all the visitors needed without further help.Merely by crawling over the clubs, flies and midges cross-fertilize them.
PERFOLIATE BELLWORT; STRAW BELL
(Uvularia perfoliala) Bunch-flower family Flowers - Fragrant, pale yellow, about 1 in.long, drooping singly (rarely 2) from tips of branches; perianth narrow, bell-shaped, of 6 petal-like segments, rough within, spreading at the tip; 6 stamens; 3 styles united to the middle.Stem: 6 to 20in.high, smooth, shining, forking about half way.Leaves:
Apparently strung on the slender stem, oval, tapering at tip.
Preferred Habitat - Moist, rich woods; thickets.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, west to Mississippi.
Hanging like a palate (uvula) from the roof of a mouth, according to imaginative Linnaeus, the little bellwort droops, and so modestly hides behind the leaf its footstalk pierces that the eye often fails to find it when so many more showy blossoms arrest attention in the May woods.Slight fragrance helps to guide the keen bumblebee to the pale yellow bell.The tips spreading apart very little and the flower being pendent, how is she to reach the nectar secreted at the base of each of its six divisions? Is it not more than probable that the inner surface is rough, as if dusted with yellow meal, to provide a foothold for her as she clings? Now securely hanging from within the inhospitable flower, her long tongue can easily drain the sweets, and in doing so she will receive pollen, to be deposited, in all probability, on the stigmatic style branches of the next bellwort entered.
With a more westerly range than the perfoliate species, the similar LARGE-FLOWERED BELLWORT (U.grandiflora) grows in like situations.Its greenish lemon-yellow flowers, an inch to an inch and a half long, appear from April to May, or when the female bumblebees, that fly before their lords, are the only insects large and strong enough to force an entrance.Mr.Trelease, who noted them on the flowers near Madison, Wisconsin, saw that one laden with pollen from another blossom came in contact with the three sticky branches of the style, protruding between the anthers, when she crawled between the anthers and sepals, as she must, to reach the nectar secreted at the base.But the linear anthers shedding their pollen longitudinally, there is a chance that the flower may fertilize itself should no bee arrive before a certain point is reached.