Naturally,
a fifth stamen would be only in its way, an encumbrance to be
banished in time. In the figwort, for example, we have seen the
fifth stamen reduced, from long sterility, to a mere scale on the
roof of the corolla tube in other lipped flowers, the useless
organ has disappeared; but in the beard-tongue, it goes through a
series of curious curves from the upper to the under side of the
flower to get out of the way of the pistil. Yet it serves an
admirable purpose in helping close the mouth of the flower, which
the hairy lip alone could not adequately guard against pilferers.
A long-tongued bee, thrusting in his head up to his eyes only,
receives the pollen in his face. The blossom is male (staminate)
in its first stage and female (pistillate) in its second.
While this is the beard-tongue commonly found in the Eastern
United States, particularly southward, and one of the most
beautiful of its clan, the western species have been selected by
the gardeners for hybridizing into those more showy, but often
less charming, flowers now quite extensively cultivated.
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