Flowers and their friends

by Margaret Warner Morley

The morning-glory and the bracted bindweed might be taken for sisters, they look so much alike. There is no doubt but that they are closely related, although the bindweed grows wild and the morning-glory has to be sown by us.

The bindweed lives in the country and twines over the hedges by the roadside; you can see its pink-and-white flowers all summer long if you look in the right places.

It is a jolly sort of life the bindweed leads, always twining, twining, twining, with its leaves facing the sunshine and its flowers dancing on their slender stems.

We often call the bindweed the wild morning-glory, and we and the bees are fond of it. We enjoy looking at it, and probably the bees do, too, though they have yet another reason for liking it. Just watch one go into a wild morning-glory some fine day. You will think she expects to find something very delightful indeed from the way she hurries in. And so she does. She buzzes down the white line to the very bottom of the flower, crowds her head as far in as she can get it, and then thrusts her long brown tongue yet deeper in to where the honey lies. For the flower makes honey for the bee, and keeps it hidden as deep as possible. There are five openings in the bottom of the flower cup that go straight into the honey wells. You need only look into a morning-glory and you will see them. All kinds of morning-glories, as well as the bindweeds, have them.

The bees know this, and wherever you see the morning-glories you will see their little winged friends.

Very many flowers provide honey for the insects, and it is fortunate for us that they do; for if they did not, we should see no butterflies and have no honey, for butterflies and bees cannot live without the honey the flowers give them.

Flower honey has a special name; we often call it nectar, for a good reason which I mean to tell you another time.

The places where the nectar is stored are the nectar holders, or nectaries.

It must be a fine thing to go to a flower and take a drink of honey whenever you wish; but what will you say when I tell you the bees get bread as well as honey from the flowers?

Yet this is what happens. You could not live upon honey alone; neither could a bee. Perhaps you could not live upon bread and honey; but you could if you were a bee, that is, beebread and honey.