Flowers and their friends

TROPÆOLUM HONEY.

Like the morning-glory flower, the tropæolum, or nasturtium, as we usually call it, has several important organs. It has a pistil and stamens, and plenty of rich nectar.

Its corolla, as you know, is large and showy, but it is not in the form of a tube. It is divided, into several distinct pieces called petals. Its calyx, too, is not green, but is colored somewhat like the corolla.

And what is that we see—that long red horn?

That is the tropæolum’s nectary. It is framed from the calyx, in which certain of the sepals have grown together to form this horn of plenty. We are tempted to call it a horn of plenty because it is shaped like a cornucopia and is overflowing with sweet nectar.

It is no wonder the bees and humming birds visit Tropæolum so constantly.

She has provided a most attractive dish of honey for them, but she has so cleverly placed it that they cannot reach it without doing her a service. In our climate bees and humming birds are her constant visitors, but in her own home, in South America, she may have visitors we do not know. She may have a favorite moth whose tongue just fits into her long red horn, or it may be a humming bird that comes to her there, for South America is the home of the humming birds, or it may be a butterfly. We do not know about that, but we do know that her red spur has doubtless grown to its present form to please some beloved bird or insect, and that the bill or tongue of that bird or insect is as long as her red spur.

Why do you suppose Tropæolum makes honey for the insects and the birds?

Why does she love to have them come and take the nectar from her long red horn?

I think I know the reason why. She has placed her horn of nectar just back of her stamens. The bees must walk over the stamens before they can reach the nectar. The humming bird must touch the anthers when he thrusts in his bill. Whatever takes the honey must touch the anthers.

This is why Tropæolum has a long red horn full of rich nectar. She wishes the birds and insects that come to her for honey to touch her anthers, which are overflowing with red pollen.

She has made the pollen for her friends, and not for her own use. She wishes her neighbors, the other tropæolums, to have the beautiful gift; but how can she send it to them?

She makes herself beautiful and bright; she fills her horn with honey and exhales fragrance.

The bees and the humming birds see her and approach. No doubt they rejoice in the bright colors, the perfume, and the nectar. They come on bright wings, and as they approach the nectary the grains of red pollen cling to them.

They cannot get enough nectar from one flower; each gives them a little, then they fly to others for more. From flower to flower they hasten and scatter pollen as they go. The pollen from one flower is often left in another, and this is what the tropæolum wants. It wishes its pollen to reach another flower, and uses the bees and the humming birds as its messengers.

Its stamens lie flat on the floor of the flower. When one is about to ripen its anther rises and stands up in front of the spur, where the nectar is ready. Then out bursts the fine red pollen. Only one anther ripens at a time. It sometimes takes several days for the tropæolum to shed all its pollen.

As soon as the pollen is gone the anther lies down again out of the way.

The stamens do not crowd the doorway of the spur; they lie down out of the way until they ripen, then they stand in front of the spur, and when their pollen is shed they lie down again.

They do not obstruct the way to the nectary because they wish the bees and birds to find an easy entrance.

Why does one anther ripen at a time? Why do not all shed pollen together, as is the habit of the morning-glory, and finish in one day?

Perhaps the tropæolum fears the rain may ruin the chances of the seeds to get pollen. We know that water spoils the pollen, and though the tropæolum has fringes to keep it from the nectary, and a roof to protect it, more or less would doubtless beat in during a hard shower.

Does the tropæolum bloom, then, in the rainy season in its own hot home—in the rainy season when the showers are terrific?

We should like to know that.

If it did, that would be a good reason for ripening the anthers one at a time. If one were spoiled, another might succeed.

We may be sure there is a good reason for this habit of the tropæolum, though we may not have discovered it.

When at last the pollen is gone and the anthers are empty and shriveled, the spur is still full of honey.

In front of it has risen, not a stamen this time, but a dainty five-rayed stigma. It is held in place by the style, and is ripe and ready for pollen. It has unfolded its five rays that it may catch and hold the pollen grains.

But all its pollen is gone! The bees and the birds have carried it away. The bees ate some and carried some home to their hives. None remains for the five-rayed stigma. But here comes a bee, a large, yellow-banded bumblebee. She has a ball of red pollen in each of her two baskets. She gathered it in another tropæolum blossom, and intends to take it home to feed the young bees; but as she enters our pollenless flower for nectar, lo! she brushes aside the five-rayed stigma. A few grains of pollen from her legs cling to the stigma, for it is sticky and holds them.

The bee hurries away. She does not know what she has done; she does not know that in brushing aside the stigma that stood in her way she has given life to the seeds and provided for a new generation of tropæolum vines.

The flower gave pollen to its neighbors, and now in its need they have sent pollen to it.

Soon the bright corolla fades and falls. Its work is done. It expressed its joy in life; it called the bees, and by them sent pollen to its neighbors, and took pollen from them in return.

For many days it kept its long red horn full of sweet nectar, until its stigma rose and took the pollen, when the flower faded and fell. But the five-rayed stigma did not fall. It remained attached to the green little fruit that lay hid in the heart of the flower.

It is not easy to see this fruit when the flower first opens, for it is small and hidden by the stamens.

But after the pollen has reached the stigma the fruit grows rapidly. The corolla falls, and the stem that holds the fruit curls up. It curls up until it has drawn the green fruit down under the leaves, out of the way of the buds that wish to open. The stigma and style fall off at last, and leave the fruit to ripen alone.

The tropæolum, which people call nasturtium, has shields to defend itself.

Warriors are content with one shield, but the tropæolum has many.

They have only to protect themselves from the darts of the enemy, but the tropæolum has a harder task: it has to protect itself against the pangs of hunger.

It needs many shields to do this, for hunger is a tireless foe, and has his quiver always full of arrows.

You see, in the tropæolum the shields are the leaves, and they are held out on long stems to catch the darts Apollo, the sun, flings at them. These are not unfriendly darts, but as they strike the little shields of the tropæolum they make them tingle with life. Then the shield leaves go to work and make food for the plant. They make starch and many other things. They make a spicy juice, for one thing, that causes our tongues to smart if we taste it. Sometimes we bite a tropæolum stem, for we like the taste of the sharp juice. But we do not want too much of it, for it makes the palate at the back of the nose tingle, and that is why we call it “nasturtium.” “Nasturtium,” you know, comes from two Latin words, nasus tortus, which mean “convulsed nose”; and nobody likes to have a “convulsed nose” very long at a time!

“Nasturtium” is not the right name for our plant with its many shields.

There is another plant which “convulses” our noses, and which the botany tells us is the nasturtium, but which we call water cress. We eat it in the spring of the year.

The right name of our garden nasturtium is “tropæolum,” which comes from a Greek word meaning “trophy,” its many shields probably being likened to so many trophies taken from the enemy.

Another name for it is “Indian cress,” and, like the water cress, it sometimes is eaten, only in this case it is the flowers instead of the leaves that find themselves converted into a salad. The fruits, too, share a similar fate. Like the rest of the plant, they are filled with spicy juice. This is a misfortune to them, since it tempts people to take these juicy, spicy fruits and pickle them to eat.

Perhaps the plant learned to store up this stinging, spicy juice to protect itself from being eaten by animals. But what can it do to protect itself from the pickle jar?

Perhaps, however, the stinging juice was but a result of the plant’s peculiar method of growth. Of course juice must have some sort of taste, and why not a stinging taste as well as any other?

This plant prepares another liquid which is not sharp and stinging, but sweet and spicy; with this delicious nectar it fills its long spur and keeps it full.

The bees collect it and convert it into tropæolum honey to fill their waxen cells.

This the plant does not object to. It makes the nectar for the bees, and when, they take it away and store it up for winter use the tropæolum suffers no loss. But when some one comes along and picks the fruits and stores them up for winter use, that is another matter!

We are tempted to call the spur of the tropæolum its “horn of plenty,” for that is the name of the horn overflowing with good things that never is empty.

The Goddess of Plenty owns this horn. You can see it in her pictures, as it always stands at her side, and there overflows with flowers and fruits. All that is good that grows in the earth is in the horn of the Goddess of Plenty. It is her cornucopia, for “cornucopia,” you know, means “horn of plenty.”

The goddess got her horn from the Naiads. They, you know, are the nymphs of the brooks and fountains, and they gave it to her.

This is the story of how she got it.

The river god, Acheloüs, and Hercules, the god of strength, struggled together. Hercules threw the god Acheloüs and seized him by the throat. Then Acheloüs, in order to escape, changed himself into a serpent.

This did not help him, for Hercules seized him by the neck and would have choked him, but Acheloüs again changed his shape.

He became a bull, but this was not enough to defend him from the great strength of Hercules, who seized him by the neck and dragged him to the ground, and in the struggle rent one of his horns from his head.

The nymphs of the brooks and the fountains, who were related to the river god, Acheloüs, consecrated the horn and gave it to the Goddess of Plenty.

That is one story, but some say the following is the history of cornucopia.

You know Saturn, the oldest of the gods, had a bad habit of swallowing his children. When Jupiter was born, his mother, Rhea, did not wish his father, Saturn, to swallow him; so she gave him to the care of the daughters of the king of Crete. They fed him on milk from the goat Amalthea, and watched over him and protected him so that his father should not find him. The people of Crete danced about him and made such a noise when he cried that his father could not hear him.

He must have cried very loud indeed to make all that necessary; but then, he was destined to become a very great god, so no doubt he did make more noise than ordinary babies.

Out of gratitude to his kind nurses, and also as a token of esteem to the good Amalthea, Jupiter broke off one of her horns and endowed it with a very wonderful power. It became filled at once with whatever its possessor might wish!

This was a horn of plenty indeed!

Now you know both stories, and you may take your choice as to which one you will believe. Whether our tropæolum had either of these in mind, it certainly made a very dainty cornucopia when it constructed its honey-horn and filled it for the bees, the butterflies, and the humming birds.

The tropæolums we have in our gardens are not the only kinds; there are, in fact, some forty different tropolæums living in South America and Mexico, and in Peru there is one which has large tuberous roots filled with plant food, which is also good food for man, and is eaten in some parts of South America instead of potatoes!

How would you like to dig your potatoes out of the nasturtium bed?

It certainly would be a pretty place to work on a summer day, and how fine the fields would look all covered with gay tropæolum blooms instead of plain green potato tops with their dull blue flowers!

A DAINTY CAVE.

Touch-me-not lives in moist places. Her feet stand in the damp earth and her head looks up above the bushes. Other plants love the damp, rich soil along the brookside, and Touch-me-not is sometimes crowded for room.

She is a tender little plant, this Touch-me-not, and yet she is brave and wise. She knows that if she is to live she must have strong seeds, and that to produce strong seeds she must be strong herself and beautiful.

She finds it easy to be beautiful in the pleasant world, where the sun shines upon her and the breezes fan her.

So forth from the axil of every leaf she swings out her dainty buds. They open their petals at last, all yellow and spotted with red. Cunning caves for the bee, they swing on slender stems. The tangle of weeds by the brookside is dotted all over by the bright blossoms. Light as they are, their slender stems bend under their weight.

The bees see them from a distance; they are attracted by the bright colors and fly to visit the touch-me-nots. They search for honey, and of course they find it, for the touch-me-not has wisely provided nectar for bees and birds.

The pretty yellow flowers contain rich honey in the little spur at the back. The end of the spur turns down, and it is in this turned-down tip the honey is made. From there it runs into the upper part of the spur, where the bees can reach it.

The moist roadside in many places is dotted with yellow touch-me-not flowers. They hang like earrings from their stems, and many call the plant “jewelweed” because of them. It is a pretty sight in the morning to see the bright jewels sparkling in the dew.

“Rubythroat” flashes about among them. “Rubythroat” is our northern humming bird. His throat is ruby red and sparkles in the sun. The rest of his body is green and brown. He shines like a jewel in the sunlight and darts from flower to flower. You cannot watch him, he flies so fast. But when he wishes a sip of honey he poises on his tiny wings before the jewelweed.

Into the dainty swinging flower he darts his slim black bill. He is partial to the honey of the touch-me-not, and wherever it grows in abundance you will be sure to see the rubythroats darting about.

Rubythroat does the flower a favor in return for the honey he gets.

You know about that. He carries pollen to it from some other flower. This new pollen enables strong seeds to form. The jewelweed is very careful to have strong seeds. It covers the pistil with a hood of its own anthers. Behind the anthers in a dark little room the pistil waits until all the pollen is gone and the anthers have fallen off.

The flower does not wish its pistil to receive its own pollen. The earth is crowded, and the seeds must be strong to grow. So the pistil is hidden behind the screen of the anthers until there is no more pollen left; then it comes forth and waits for the birds or the bees to bring it fresh pollen.

The anthers and pistil are not on the floor of the touch-me-not flower, as they are in the nasturtium. They hang from the roof like tiny chandeliers.

The bees do not walk over them, but touch them with their heads or backs, and the humming bird touches them with the top of its bill or with the feathers on its face.

When the birds or the bees have brought the pollen, the yellow corolla falls off and the fruit grows fast.

It is a smooth and delicate fruit, and it may be you know what it does to help the seeds find room.

When the fruit is ripe, the outer covering all of a sudden splits and curls up with considerable force, acting like a spring and shooting the seeds far over the thicket.

It spreads them far and wide, so they have a better chance to find a place to take root when the time comes.

The fruits are so eager to send the seeds on their journey, and so fearful that some harm will come to them, that they snap them away if any one touches the pods. If you jostle these eager plants you will hear the seeds flying in all directions. If you touch a seed-pod it goes off in your fingers. No wonder we call the plants “touch-me-nots”! Some call them “snapweed” or “snappers,” and the botany calls them “impatiens,” because they are so impatient!

They have yet another name, “lady’s eardrop,” and I do not know how many more. People must like the pretty things to give them so many names.

In the garden grows a relative of our jewelweed. It is called the “garden balsam,” and sometimes “lady’s slipper.”

Its own home is far-off India.

Its flowers are larger than those of the jewelweed and are not yellow, but white or red or pink, and sometimes pink and white spotted. In shape, however, it is very like the jewelweed; it hides its pistil beneath the anthers in the same way and snaps its seeds afar.

Its flowers grow double and close to the stalk, and it makes a fine show in the garden in the fall of the year.

There is one thing I should like very much to know, and that is, just when and how this Indian balsam and its cousin the North American jewelweed got separated.

Way, way back, farther back than the building of the pyramids, these two plants must have had the same ancestors. Now, where did those ancestors live? In India? In America? Somewhere between? And what caused them finally to get so widely separated?

Who is going to tell us?

For over two hundred and fifty years the Indian balsam has been cultivated as a garden plant, and no doubt this long cultivation has done much to bring about changes. Still, its resemblance to the jewelweed is quite unmistakable, and we cannot doubt the relationship of the two.

THE PELARGONIUMS.

A pelargonium is a “stork’s bill.” “Pelargonium” comes from a Greek word meaning “stork,” and the plant is so named because of the long, beaklike seed-pods. We call the pelargoniums “geraniums,” and raise them in our houses. “Geranium” means almost the same as “pelargonium,” for a geranium is a “crane’s bill,” “geranium” coming from a Greek word meaning “crane,” and the plant is so called because of the shape of the seed-pods.

I do not think there is much difference between a crane’s bill and a stork’s bill, and these two plants with their seed-pods so very much alike were, no doubt, named “stork’s bill” and “crane’s bill” to distinguish them from each other. But we have succeeded in hopelessly mixing them up, for everybody insists upon calling the pelargonium “geranium,” and the geraniums which grow wild in our woods and fields we call “crane’s bill” and “herb Robert.”

The pelargoniums are mostly Africans. There are a great many kinds of them, and all but ten or twelve live in South Africa among the Bushmen, the Boers, and the Englishmen.

The rest have chosen to settle in the northern part of Africa, in the Orient, if you know where that is, and in Australia. Some people believe there are four hundred different pelargoniums, and some say there are less than two hundred. You see, the pelargoniums change easily. Thus a great many varieties are always arising, and it is almost impossible at this late day to discover which was the original form of the plant.

The pelargoniums we know best are the ones we call “horseshoe geraniums,” “Lady Washington geraniums,” and “rose geraniums.”

We are apt to think of the whole Pelargonium Family as being ornamental rather than useful, but in that wonderful South African country where so many of them live, there is actually a pelargonium that produces edible tubers!

The next time you go to Cape Colony you must be sure and eat potatoes gathered from a geranium plant!

Down in Algeria, where the walls are so white and the sun shines so hot, the people express an oil from their geraniums and sell it. Other geraniums also yield this fragrant oil, but nowhere is it so largely used as in sunny Algeria.

Pelargoniums love to grow. You need only break off a twig and stick it in the ground, and it will grow as merrily as though nothing had happened.

One day a double-flowered crimson pelargonium blew away in a gale of wind. It broke off just above the root and away it went. It was rescued, stuck back into the pot of earth, abundantly watered, and continued to open its flowers as though such an escapade were an everyday occurrence!

Now about its beak. The pelargonium has a beak, no doubt, but it does not put it to the same use the stork does, for its beak is made up of the long styles of the pistil which cling fast to a central column. The whole fruit looks a little like a long bird’s beak. This beak opens, but not to swallow little fishes as a stork’s beak does.

It opens to let out a feather! When the seed gets ripe, the case in which it lies at the bottom of the pistil breaks away, and the style curves up and breaks loose from the central support. As soon as the style loosens, out comes the feather. Not a real feather, of course, but a tuft of silvery white hairs that grow along the inside of the style and are packed close as can be until the style lets them out; then they separate and form a wide fringe along the loosened style. Finally, the style is only held by the very tip; then this gives way, and the feather flies away with seed and style. It flies on the wings of the wind, of course, since it has none of its own.

In this way the geranium seeds are sometimes carried long distances. But this is not the end of the story. At last the seed with its coverings and feather rests on the ground. The seed end is towards the ground, and the very tip of the pod is provided with a few short, stiff hairs, that point backwards like the barbs on a fish hook or a bee sting.

Now what do you suppose these hairs are for? Do you think their being there is a mere accident? Not at all. When the weather is damp, the style, with the feather attached, curls up. Then it acts like a gimlet and forces the pointed end of the seed into the ground. When it becomes dry, the style straightens out. But the seed cannot be pulled out of the ground when this happens, because the barbs on the tip of the seed-case hold it fast! So it does time and again. When it is damp, the seed is forced deeper into the earth. When it is dry, the style straightens out so as to be ready to curl up again.

You see how it is, do you not? The pelargonium is planting its seed.

Certainly the geraniums are good parents. All the members of this astonishing family do something clever for the sake of the seeds.

Some of the pelargoniums decorate their leaves with horseshoes. All are in the habit of folding their leaves fan-like in the bud. When they grow large these folds straighten out. It is a good thing to be folded up fan-like in the bud; the leaf then takes up less room, and is kept snug and safe until it grows strong enough to care for itself. The pelargonium indulges in large stipules. These are green, leaf-like bodies growing on the leaf stalk where it is attached to the stem of the plant. They fold over the young leaf and protect it; but after the leaf comes out of the motherly arms of the stipules and stands up on a long stem, the work of the stipules is done, and gradually they fade and wither away.

Most pelargonium leaves are covered with a fine coat of hairs. In the warm countries where pelargoniums grow wild they need a coat of down to prevent the sun from scorching them.

As long as there is plenty of water in the leaves the sun cannot harm them, no matter how warmly it shines; but if it can draw out the water, then the leaf must fade. The coat of hairs for one thing prevents the water from evaporating too rapidly. Thus the pelargonium does not wear its fuzzy coat to protect it from the cold, but from the sun. The hairs also prevent the rain or dew from stopping up the breathing pores of the leaf.

Most pelargonium leaves have a habit of using perfumery of one kind or another. They make it themselves out of the food they find in the earth and the air. The rose geraniums we think are particularly successful in this respect.

Why do you suppose the pelargoniums perfume their leaves?

Perhaps it is to prevent animals from grazing them, for animals do not like to eat strong-scented things, even if to our senses the odor is agreeable. If this is the reason, we are glad the pelargoniums selected a perfume that we can enjoy.

We think there may be some such reason for the fragrance of the pelargonium, because plants are never wasteful. They make only what will be useful to them in some way. They love to be beautiful, but are never satisfied unless theirs is a useful beauty. The fragrance of the leaves, however, may be due to some cause and useful for some purpose that we know not of.

The Geranium People are rather unsettled as to their relatives—or, rather, we are somewhat confused on the subject. Probably the geraniums know all about it, but they will not tell the botanists, so the botanists have to do the best they can by themselves.

Some say the tropæolum belongs to the Geranium Family, and it certainly does bear quite a strong family resemblance to the geraniums.

They also say the Impatiens Family is a branch of the geraniums and the pelargoniums, which you know we always call geraniums. The crane’s bills and herb Roberts and all their near relations of course are geraniums, and some say the wood sorrels belong to this distinguished family.

Whether these all belong to one family or not, one thing is certain: they are all agreeable to us, and are not so very numerous even when taken all together. The whole of them do not number half so many as do the branches of the Convolvulus Family.

Like the race of white people, they belong principally to temperate climates.

They do not all belong to our climate, however.

The nasturtiums, for instance, are South Americans and Mexicans. They like to keep warm better than some other members of their family, and their seeds cannot, as a rule, live through our cold winters. But if we gather the seeds and put them away out of the fierce winter cold and plant them in the spring, then the nasturtiums will grow their best and please us with their bright flowers. We cannot help liking them, they are so jolly with their gay flowers and their round leaves with twisting stalks.

We like them, too, because the flower stem curls up and draws the seeds under the leaves out of the way of the young buds that are waiting to bloom.

I do not know whether wild nasturtiums are as large and bright as the cultivated ones. Very likely not, as people have taken great pains to make them large and bright by selecting the seeds of the largest flowers from year to year and giving them good soil in which to grow.

Perhaps the members of the Geranium Family we really know best are the pelargoniums from the Cape of Good Hope. It is about as warm in their African home as it is in our Florida, so of course they cannot live out of doors through our cold Northern winters. But we take them in the house when cold weather comes, and sometimes put them in the cellar.

Of course they do not grow much in the cellar, but they rest there, and when they are taken out in the spring are all ready to wake up and blossom.

The whole Geranium Family seems to take extra care of its seeds.

We know how the nasturtium curls up its stem so as to draw the seeds below the leaves out of the way, giving the buds a chance to come out, and also protecting the seeds.

The pelargoniums do not do that, but they do something much more elaborate for the sake of their seed-children, as we know. They give them a parachute to fly with, for one thing. A parachute, you know, is a contrivance by which bodies can be sustained in the air while falling or blowing along in the wind.

But the parachute is not all,—they give them an auger by which to bore into the ground and plant themselves.

The North American crane’s bill seeds perform in a very similar way, their flowers and seed-cases being quite like those of the pelargonium.

How do you suppose North American crane’s bills came to be like South African pelargoniums?

This is a matter which needs investigating.

The pelargoniums are not as juicy as the nasturtiums, but they are somewhat juicy, and their juice has a slightly acid taste instead of being pungent, like the nasturtium juice.

Where pelargoniums live out of doors the year round they grow very large and have stems that are quite woody.

Some of them, as we know, are useful to the human race as well as ornamental, supplying food and an oil highly esteemed as a perfume.

The wood sorrels do not look much like the rest of the Geranium Family. But they do resemble it in their habit of caring for their seeds. Out in the fields you will find the small, yellow-flowered sheep sorrel, with its clover-like, sour-tasting leaves. Now hunt for a seed-pod. They are pretty little things that stand up something like Christmas candles. Touch a ripe one and it splits open down each of its five cells and shows you a row of white seeds in each. You think the seeds are not ripe because they are white, and you touch one of them. What has happened? That seed surely exploded! No, there it is—the other side of the table, not white, but dark brown. Queer performance, this. You touch another and another, and at last you get to understand it. Each seed is surrounded by an elastic white covering, and this it is that suddenly curls up, very much as the impatiens pod does, and sends the seed within it flying!