Flowers and Their Friends

How flowers and insects came to need each other, explained to children by a teacher who refused to talk down — “it would be very stupid indeed to try to read a book written in Arabic,” she begins, so look up every word you don't know.

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Lady's Slipper

In the garden grows a relative of our jewelweed.

It is called the "garden balsam," and sometimes "lady's slipper."

Its own home is far-off India.

Its flowers are larger than those of the jewelweed and are not yellow, but white or red or pink, and sometimes pink and white spotted. In shape, however, it is very like the jewelweed; it hides its pistil beneath the anthers in the same way and snaps its seeds afar.

Its flowers grow double and close to the stalk, and it makes a fine show in the garden in the fall of the year.

There is one thing I should like very much to know, and that is, just when and how this Indian balsam and its cousin the North American jewelweed got separated. Way, way back, farther back than the building of the pyramids, these two plants must have had the same ancestors. Now, where did those ancestors live? In India? In America? Somewhere between?

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