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Wers and Their Friends

and a roof to protect it, more or less would doubtless beat in during a hard shower. Does the tropæolum bloom, then, in the rainy season in its own hot home-in the rainy season when the showers are terrific?

We should like to know that...

If it did, that would be a good reason for ripening the anthers one at a time. If one were spoiled, another might succeed.

We may be sure there is a good reason for this habit of the tropæolum, though we may not have discovered it.

When at last the pollen is gone and the anthers are empty and shriveled, the spur is still full of honey.

In front of it has risen, not a stamen this time, but a dainty five-rayed stigma. It is held in place by the style, and is ripe and ready for pollen. It has unfolded its five rays that it may catch and hold the pollen grains.

But all its pollen is gone! The bees and the birds have carried it away. The bees ate some and carried some home to their hives. None remains for the five-rayed stigma. But here comes a bee, a large, yellow-banded bumblebee. She has a ball of red pollen in each of her two baskets. She gathered