My Studio Neighbors

In some flowers this separation is effected, as I have shown, by their maturing at different periods; in others, as in the iris, by mere mechanical means; while in a long list of plants, as in the willow, poplar, hemp, oak, and nettle, the cross-fertilization is absolutely necessitated by the fact of the staminate and stigmatic flowers being either separated on the same stalk or on different plants, the pollen being carried by insects or the wind. We may see a pretty illustration of this in the little wild flower known as the devil's-bit (Chamaelirium luteum,), whose long, white, tapering spire of feathery bloom may often be seen rising above the sedges in the swamp. Two years ago I chanced upon a little colony of four or five plants at the edge of a bog. The flowers, all of them, were mere petals and stamens (B, Fig. 8). I looked in vain for a single stigmatic plant or flower; but far across the swamp, a thousand feet distant, I at length discovered a single spire, composed entirely of pistillate flowers, as shown in A (Fig. 8), and my magnifying-glass clearly revealed the pollen upon their stigmas--doubtless a welcome message brought from the isolated affinity afar by some winged sponsor, to whom the peculiar fragrance of the flower offers a special attraction, and thus to whom the fortunes of the devil's-bit have been committed. The presence of fragrance and honey in a dioecious flower may be accepted in the abstract as almost conclusive of an insect affinity, as in most flowers of this class, notably the beech, pine, dock, grasses, etc., the wind is the fertilizing agent, and there is absence alike of conspicuous color, fragrance, and nectar--attributes which refer alone to insects, or possibly humming-birds in certain species.