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Many of these species bury their
offspring below ground; but the wood-sorrel bears its blind
flowers nodding from the top of a curved scape at the base of the
plant, where we can readily find them. By having no petals, and
other features assumed by an ordinary flower to attract insects,
and chiefly in saving pollen, they produce seed with literally
the closest economy. It is estimated that the average blind
flower of the wood-sorrel does its work with four hundred pollen
grains, while the prodigal peony scatters with the help of wind
and insect visitors over three and a half millions!
Yet no plant, however economically inclined, can afford to
deteriorate its species through self-fertilization; therefore, to
overcome the evils of in-breeding, the wood-sorrel, like other
plants that bear cleistogamous flowers, takes special pains to
produce showy blossoms to attract insects, on which they
absolutely depend to transfer their pollen from flower to flower.
These have their organs so arranged as to make self-fertilization
impossible.


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