The flower and the bee; plant life and pollination

Description:

Fagopyrum esculentum 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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s, although occasionally they come forpollen. One of the larger bumblebees (Bombiis fervidus), whichhas a tongue V2 mm. long, on the contrary devotes itself ex-clusively to sucking nectar and ignores the pollen. It is ratherclumsy in its movements and visits only from 12 to 14 flowersper minute. The bilabiate flowers of the pickerel-weed (Ponte-deria cordata) are examined much more rapidly by a smallerspecies of bumblebee (Bombus vagans). In July the violet-bluespikes of this aquatic plant fringe the banks of many northernstreams in countless numbers. Bombus vagans is a very commonvisitor, beginning always with the lowest flowers of the spikeand working upward. By actual count, several times re-peated, I found that the average number of visits per minutewas about 70. The small florets of the goldenrods are visitedso rapidly that the number per minute cannot usually becounted. But when the nectar is very abundant, as in theflowers of the basswood, century-plant, spider-plant (Cleome 90
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Fig. 46. Buckwheat. Fagopymm escnlentumSecretes nectar only during the forenoon; yields a dark honey, about the color of molasses THE FLOWER AND THE BEE spinosa), and some species of Eucalyptus, a honey-bee may ob-tain a load from 2 or 3, or even 1 flower. Bees in collecting pollen and nectar are faithful as a rule toa single species of flower—they exhibit flower fidelity. Thisis for their advantage since, if they were constantly passingfrom flowers of one form to those of another, much time wouldbe lost in locating the nectar. At the same time the flowersare cross-pollinated and a waste of pollen is prevented. Evenwhole colonies may be true to a single species. At Ventura,CaL, in 1884, 1 colony out of 200 gathered exclusively froman abundance of mustard-bloom, while 199 gathered from thesages. But where there are several differently colored varieties ofthe same species, honey-bees soon learn to visit them indis-criminately. Zinnia elegans displays white, yellow, red, andpurple vari

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