Identifier: flowerbeeplant00love (find matches)
Title: The flower and the bee; plant life and pollination
Year: 1918 (1910s)
Authors: Lovell, John Harvey, 1860-1939
Subjects: Fertilization of plants
Publisher: New York, C. Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden
Digitizing Sponsor: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden

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. It bears no blazonry of bloomto charm the senses with fragrance, or splendor, but its homelyhue is more enchanting than the lily or the rose. Should itsharvest fail for a single year, famine would depopulate theearth. Most grasses have perfect or hermaphrodite flowers, andself-pollination is largely prevented by the anthers and stigmasmaturing at different times; but Indian corn is a familiar ex-ample of a grass with unisexual flowers. The spindles orstaminate flower-clusters terminate the stalks and are bornewell above the foliage, while the pistillate clusters (the ears inthe silk) stand much lower down, where they are more likely tobe cross-pollinated. A part of the sedges have perfect flowers(Fig. 9), but in a large number of species (Carex) they areunisexual, both fertile and sterile flowers occurring in the samespike or flower-cluster, or in different spikes on the sameplant (Fig. 10), or more rarely on different plants. Self-fertiliza-tion is not uncommon in both families. 30
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Fig. 9. Cotton-Grass. EriyJiorum virgimA wind-pollinated sedge THE FLOWER AND THE BEE A few grasses bloom in the afternoon, but the majority openin the earher part of the day, many at sunrise or a little later.Let us go out into the fields at four oclock on a morning early inJuly. The sun has not yet appeared above the horizon, but aclear sky betokens a fair day. There is hardly a breath of wind,and so still is the air that One might well hear the opening of a flower. There is a legend that in ancient Egypt when the first raysof the rising sun fell on the gigantic statue of Memnon, of whichonly a shattered fragment now remains, there issued from ita sound which was believed to be the voice of the god. But itis a nobler greeting, the actual culmination of their life cycle,with which the flowering grasses welcome the great source oflife and light. The eastern sky has long been tinged with red, and at lastthe sun appears above the hills and its beams overflow theworld. With the gradually

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