How Do Flowers Produce Seeds?
Naturally, the nearest male plant to a female plant may be quite some distance off. How, then, is the pollen from the male plant to mix with the pollen of the female plant? In some cases it is the wind which blows the pollen powder from one to the other, and this thus leaves the development of a perfect seed from a perfect flower open to chance. In the case of perfumed flowers, however, which are mostly low-growing plants, the wind cannot be depended upon. So nature gives to such plants the power to make the perfumed oil and the busy bee does the rest. The perfume being a flying oil rises up into the air and attracts the bee. He is gathering honey and visits in turn all the flowers to which he is attracted. He lights on a male flower and gathers in his honey, and incidentally acquires on his legs, without intending to do so, some of the pollen of the male flower. Then he flies about to the next flower, and to others, and sooner or later he will come across a female flower of the same kind as that from which he secured the pollen on his legs. When he thus enters the female flower, the pollen on his legs mixes with the pollen of the same kind of the female flower, and quite unintentionally the bee helps thus to make the perfect seed. It is not a part of a bee’s business to do this carrying. It only happens that he does this in connection with his regular business of gathering honey. It is a wonderful thing which may be noted here that the pollen from a male of any flower will not mix with the pollen of the female of any other kind of flower, but that the same kinds only have attractions for each other. Flowers are given these attractive perfumes in order that they may attract the bees and other insects in this way. The plants or flowers which grow closest to the ground have generally the strongest and most far-reaching smells. This is so that they will not be overlooked.