The number of insects
these destroy, not to mention the joy of their presence, would
alone compensate the householder of economic bent for the cost of
a shallow concrete tank.
Opening some time after six o'clock in the morning, the white
water lily spreads its many-petalled, deliciously fragrant,
golden-centered chalice to welcome the late-flying bees and
flower flies, the chief pollinators. Beetles, "skippers," and
many other creatures on wings alight too. "I have named two
species of bees (Halictus nelumbonis and Prosopis nelumbonis) on
account of their close economic relation to these flowers," says
Professor Robertson, who has captured over two hundred and fifty
species of bees near his home in Carlinville, Illinois, and
described nearly a third of them as new. Linnaeus, no doubt the
first to conceive the pretty idea of making a floral clock, drew
up a list of blossoms whose times of opening and closing marked
the hours on its face; but even Linnaeus failed to understand
that the flight of insects is the mainspring on which flowers
depend to set the mechanism going.
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