My Studio Neighbors

Two months hence an occasional silky messenger will float away from the glistening clouds about the open milkweed pods, but who ever thanks the bees of June for them? The flower is but a bright anticipation--an expression of hope in the being of the parent plant. It has but one mission. All its fragrance, all its nectar, all its beauty of form and hue are but means towards the consummation of the eternal edict of creation--"Increase and multiply." To that end we owe all the infinite forms, designs, tints, decorations, perfumes, mechanisms, and other seemingly inexplicable attributes. Its threshold must bear its own peculiar welcome to its insect, or perhaps to its humming-bird friend, or counterpart; its nectaries must both tempt and reward his coming, and its petals assist his comfortable tarrying. Next to the floral orchids, the mechanism of our milkweed blossom is perhaps the most complex and remarkable, and illustrates as perfectly as any of the orchid examples given in Darwin's noble work the absolute divine intention of the dependence of a plant species upon the visits of an insect. Our milkweed flower is a deeply planned contrivance to insure such an end. It fills the air with enticing fragrance. Its nectaries are stored with sweets, and I fancy each opening bud keenly alert with conscious solicitude for its affinity. Though many other flowers manage imperfectly to perpetuate their kind in the default of insect intervention, the milkweed, like most of the orchids, is helpless and incapable of such resource. Inclose this budded umbel in tarlatan gauze and it will bloom days after its fellow-blooms have fallen, anticipating its consummation, but no pods will be seen upon this cluster.