Slight fragrance helps to guide the
keen bumblebee to the pale yellow bell. The tips spreading apart
very little and the flower being pendent, how is she to reach the
nectar secreted at the base of each of its six divisions? Is it
not more than probable that the inner surface is rough, as if
dusted with yellow meal, to provide a foothold for her as she
clings? Now securely hanging from within the inhospitable flower,
her long tongue can easily drain the sweets, and in doing so she
will receive pollen, to be deposited, in all probability, on the
stigmatic style branches of the next bellwort entered.
With a more westerly range than the perfoliate species, the
similar LARGE-FLOWERED BELLWORT (U. grandiflora) grows in like
situations. Its greenish lemon-yellow flowers, an inch to an inch
and a half long, appear from April to May, or when the female
bumblebees, that fly before their lords, are the only insects
large and strong enough to force an entrance. Mr. Trelease, who
noted them on the flowers near Madison, Wisconsin, saw that one
laden with pollen from another blossom came in contact with the
three sticky branches of the style, protruding between the
anthers, when she crawled between the anthers and sepals, as she
must, to reach the nectar secreted at the base.
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