My Studio Neighbors

While each family of plants is apt to favor some particular general plan, the modifications in the various species seem almost without limit. Let us now look at the Heath family. The family of the heath, cranberry, pyrola, Andromeda, and mountain-laurel--how do these blossoms welcome their insect friends? This group is particularly distinguished by the unusual exception in the form of its anthers, which open by pores at their tips, instead of the ordinary side fissures. Two or three forms of these anthers are shown in my row of stamens (Fig. 1). Seen thus in their detached condition, how incomprehensible and grotesque do they appear! And yet, when viewed at home, in their bell-shaped corollas, their hospitable expression and greeting are seen to be quite as expressive and rational as those of the sage. Take the mountain-laurel, for instance; what a singular exhibition is this which we may observe on any twilight evening in the laurel copse, the dense clusters of pink-white bloom waited upon by soft-winged fluttering moths, and ever and anon celebrating its cordial spirit by a mimic display of pyrotechnics as the anthers hurl aloft their tiny showers of pollen! Every one is familiar with the curious construction of this flower, with its ten radiating stamens, each with its anther snugly tucked away in a pouch at the rim of its saucer-shaped corolla. Thus they appear in the freshly opened flower, and thus will they remain and wither if the flower is brought indoors and placed in a vase upon our mantel. Why? Because the hope of the blossom's life is not fulfilled in these artificial conditions; its natural counterpart, the insect, has failed to respond to its summons.