Why, it would look so small that the bee could hardly see it. And sweetly though the whole clover head smells, the fragrance of a single flower would be so slight that it would hardly serve as an invitation to step in for refreshments.
So it would seem that the clover plant does wisely in making one good-sized bunch out of many tiny flowers, for in this way the bees are persuaded to carry their pollen from one blossom to another.
The moral of the clover story is this: Be very careful before you insist that you hold in your hand or see in the picture only one flower.
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Can you think of any other flowers that deceive us as the clover does?
Early in May we see in the woods a tree that is very beautiful. It is covered with what seem to be white blossoms. This tree is the flowering dogwood, and it tricks us somewhat in the same way as does the clover; for in this picture (Fig. [261]) you see what nearly every one believes to be a single flower of the dogwood. And if some time ago you had been asked to give the building plan of the dogwood flower, you would have been pretty sure to say that the four large white leaves formed its corolla.
Fig. 261
Here you would have been quite mistaken; for instead of one large flower, the picture shows you a number of tiny blossoms, so closely packed, and so surrounded by the four white leaves, that they look like only one blossom.