' How Life is Lived '—6
' Insects and Flowers'
Doris L. MACKINNON , D.Sc.
(Professor of Zoology, King's College,
University of London)
Though some flowers are fertilised by the wind, others hy water, some in tropical countries, by humming birds, and some in Java even by bats, insects are the commonest fertilisers of all ; and it is of nature's marvellous ways of adapting different flowers for different insects that Professor Doris Mackinnon is to talk to you this afternoon.
Pollination, as you know, means the transference of pollen to the female flower. Without the nectar in the flower, butterflies and moths, bees and wasps could not exist ; the nectar theirs, they cannot help carrying the pollen that sticks to them to the female flower and so fertilising it. Each depends for its existence on the other.
Colour and shape that help the day-flying insect to find the particular flower it is adapted to would be useless as a guide at night, and so nature give the tobacco plant the most potent scent to attract the night-flying moth. Snap-dragons and broom have closed flowers and so they are adapted for the bumble-bee that is heavy enough to open them.