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Plant thou a tree whose leaves shall sing
Thy deeds and thee each fresh, recurrent spring."
Fit symbol of immortality! Even before the dogwood's leaves fall
in autumn, the round buds for next year's bloom appear on the
twigs, to remain in consoling evidence all winter with the
scarlet fruit. When the buds begin to swell in spring, the four
reddish-purple, scale-like bracts expand, revealing a dozen or
more tiny green flowers clustered within for the large, white,
petal-like parts, with notched, tinted, and puckered lips, into
which these reddish bracts speedily develop, and which some of us
have mistaken for a corolla, are not petals at all - not the true
flowers - merely appendages around the real ones, placed there,
like showy advertisements, to attract customers. Nectar, secreted
in a disk on each minute ovary, is eagerly sought by little
Andrena and other bees, besides flies and butterflies. Insects
crawling about these clusters, whose florets are all of one kind,
get their heads and undersides dusted with pollen, which they
transfer as they suck.


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