If you ask me for the exact name of our plant that has changed so many times, I cannot tell you, for I do not know.
But that, we believe, is Mother Nature’s way of making new flowers.
TONGUES AND TUBES.
A flower tube is a most convenient and safe place to keep stamens and nectar. If it is protected by scales or hairs or a sticky juice, as is often the case, the ants and other small insects are given a gentle but convincing hint to keep out. They might readily infer their presence is not wanted, and though it may hurt their feelings a little, they have nothing to do but obey.
Some flowers like ants and little crawling insects, but they have open, spreading corollas with the nectars easily reached; but you may be sure a flower with a tube is no friend to them.
Its tube says “keep out” as plainly as though it had put out a printed sign, and then a tube is a sign anybody in the insect world can read, no matter what language he may speak or whether he knows his letters.
But tubes are not intended to keep all visitors away,—far from it.
They are as much an invitation to one kind of insect as they are a request to “keep off these premises” to another. If you happen to be a large insect with a long tongue, you will be sure to find a welcome in many a flower with a tube. And no doubt, if you are fond of honey and are industrious about collecting it, you will find that the flower whose nectar you like the very best and which you visit the oftenest has a tube just the same shape and size as your tongue; and what is more, it will be in the most convenient position for you to reach it.
It seems to be your flower, and no doubt it is, for flowers have a way of making their tubes to fit the tongues of those who love them best. Not that they do all the fitting, for no doubt the tongues also grow to fit the flowers.