How to study wild flowers / by George Henslow.

  • George Henslow
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: How to study wild flowers / by George Henslow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to produce much or even any good seed, and they have to start afresh on some new line. These experiences of horticulturists explain how it is that the finer flowers in nature which depend more or less completely on the visits of insects are not the most abundant. Thus in the family of orchids, the flowers of which are so constructed that the majority of them cannot set seed at all unless they are visited, it has been observed that, e.g. a Dendrohium speriosvm which bore 40,000 blossoms growing in the open in its native country, produced only one pod ! On the other hand, florists are perfectly well aware that the poorest flowers, or the most ' weedy'-looking plants, are always the most prolific. Indeed, a certain florist always kept a stock of ' worthless ' cyclamens, solely for the sake of procuring an abundance of seed; which he then raised and cultivated till they reached the required standard of excellence, the ' best' cycla- mens being very barren. It is worth while mentioning that it was formerlj- thought, that as regularly' self-fertilized plants are often small weeds and annuals, and bore insignificant flowers when compared with insect-pollinated plants, that there must be something injurious in self-fer- tilization. This was a great error, due to its being what is called an ' a jiviori assumption' of what was thought to be best for the plant; instead of studying the plants themselves to see what really hap})ened in nature. HoNF.Y-SECKKTiNG Org.\ns.—Becs and other insects visit flowers for the sake of the honey or pollen, or both, for food. The honey is secreted in various ways. Thus it may be by means of a iUkJi. or fleshy ring on the floral receptacle at the base of the flower within the calyx, or by one or more separate gla iuls. It has been thought that these latter, when they occur on the receptacle, may be derived from rudimentary organs, representing suppressed stamens or carpels. They may occasionally occupy the site of such, as in the male flower of Lychvit^ dioica, where it stands
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