Flowers and their friends

by Margaret Warner Morley

Then she goes home and packs her load away in the hive for future use.

You see it is not much trouble to make beebread—that is, if you know how. It does not have to be raised or baked, yet I doubt if you or I would be able to make it so that a bee would consider it fit to eat.

These anthers are held up on long white stalks which grow to the inside of the flower cup, and which are named filaments.

Since there are five anthers there are five filaments.

We call the whole thing, anther and filament, a stamen.

But this is not all there is to be found in a morning-glory flower. There is something else, and if it were not for this something else we should not have the fun of learning about honey and stamens, because there would be none! Both honey and stamens exist because of this something else.

It is in the very center of the flower, and the stamens stand about it in a circle. It stands up like a pole and has a knob at the top. The knob sticks out above the stamens as a rule. When the flower cup falls, the stamens fall too, because the filaments grow fast to it. But this something else does not fall. It stays on the vine, and you can see it better after the flower cup has fallen.

We call it the pistil. It has neither honey nor pollen, yet on its account the bees and butterflies visit the flowers.