Identifier: flowerbeeplant00love (find matches)
Title: The flower and the bee; plant life and pollination
Year: 1918 (1910s)
Authors: Lovell, John Harvey, 1860-1939
Subjects: Fertilization of plants
Publisher: New York, C. Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden
Digitizing Sponsor: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden

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Text Appearing Before Image:
Despite many attacks, this doctrine as never been
disproven, at least historically. In most flowers the calyx has
remained green, and in some genera, as Hepatica, its deriva-
tion from leaves is evident from inspection. It is not uncom-
mon in the buttercups, anemones, poppies, mustards, tulips,
and many other genera for both the sepals and petals to re-
vert to green leaves, and I have before me a flower of Fuchsia
with three white petals, while the fourth is a green leaf. In
Cactus no line of demarcation can be drawn between bracts,
sepals, and petals, and all three are in the same spiral series.
Even assuming that foliage-leaves were derived from sterile
spore-bearing organs (sporophlls), there is every reason to be-
lieve that the sheathing bracts of the earliest flowers were
green. In the Black Hills a fossil flower of a cycad-like
plant (Cycadeoidea) has been found by Wieland, which is pro-
tected by an indefinite number of hairy, green, bract-like
leaves. (Fig. 104.)
The green hue of both green leaves and flowers is produced

224
Text Appearing After Image:
FIG. 104. Diagram of the "Flower", or Strobilus, of Cycadeoidea dacotensis,
a Fossil Plant from the Black Hills, South Dakota

a, Hairy, green sheathing bracts; b, folded stamens; c, elongated axis; d, conical mass of
sterile and fertile scales, the latter bearing terminal naked seeds. From somewhat
similar ancestors modern flowers were perhaps derived. (After Wieland)

THE FLOWER AND THE BEE

by a pigment called chlorophyll, or leaf-green. If a few leaves
of grass, or of any common plant, be placed in alcohol the
chlorophyll will dissolve out, forming a yellowish-green solution,
and the leaves will be left entirely white. Chemical examina-
tion shows that there are two kinds of chlorophyll in the solu-
tion, a blue-green, which is abundant, and a yellow-green pig-
ment which is less common. Place this solution in bright
sunhght and the green color will soon be destroyed. Green
seaweeds, when left on the beach by the waves, soon turn
yellowish owing to the destruction of the chlorophyll. In liv-
leaves and green flowers under the action of bright light the
green pigment is constantly being destroyed and renewed, so
that no two leaves are identical in hue, and no leaf long remains
the same shade. Four hundred years ago a German poet,
Freidank, observed this fact.

“Many hundred flowers
Alike none ever grew;
Mark it well, no leaf of green
Is just another’s hue.”


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