Blossom hosts and insect guests; how the heath family, the bluets, the figworts, the orchids and similar wild flowers welcome the bee, the fly, the wasp, the moth and other faithful insects (1901) (20392288081)

Title: Blossom hosts and insect guests; how the heath family, the bluets, the figworts, the orchids and similar wild flowers welcome the bee, the fly, the wasp, the moth and other faithful insects
Identifier: blossomhostsinse00gibs (find matches)
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Gibson, W. Hamilton (William Hamilton), 1850-1896; Davie, Eleanor E
Subjects: Fertilization of plants
Publisher: New York, Newson
Contributing Library: NCSU Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: NCSU Libraries



Text Appearing Before Image:
Orchid blossoms The orchids are usually very irregular, and six- parted. The ovary is one-celled, and becomes a pod containing an enormous yield of minute, spore- like seeds (Fig. 3) in some species, as in the vanilla pod, to the number of a million, and in one species of the maxillaria, it has been computed, 1,750,000. The pollen, unlike ordinary flowers, is gathered together in waxy masses of varying consistency, variously formed and disposed in the blossom, its
Text Appearing After Image:
Fig. 2. grains being connected with elastic cobwebby threads, which occasionally permit the entire mass to be stretched to four or five times its length, and recover its original shape when released. This is specially noticeable in the showy orchid, later described. The grains thus united are readily dis- entangled from their mass when brought into con- tact with a viscid object, as the stigma. But the most significant botanical contrast and distinction is found in the union of the style and 127