Though these plants have specialised themselves to catch and use animal food, still there are not very many plants that do so, and the old fairy tales about trees with branches which caught men and devoured them, as a sea-anemone catches and devours its food, are only fairy tales, because no such plants exist.
CHAPTER XXII.
FLOWER STRUCTURES IN RELATION TO INSECTS
The relation between flowers and insects is one of mutual help and advantage, and therefore is quite different from that in the cases where the animals eat the plants or vice versa.
When we examined flowers in general, we found that the insects do a very important work in carrying the pollen from flower to flower, and that their structures are arranged to attract insects and to make it easy for them to get covered with the pollen of one flower and leave it on the next. If we look at the details in some of the flowers, we shall see how elaborate their structures may be, and how carefully they are planned to make sure that the bee gets the pollen on its body and carries it with it to the neighbouring flowers.
Fig. 116. Circular flower of Rose, with many stamens in the centre.
In the simple circular flowers, such as roses, poppies, and lilies, the bee can enter freely from any side that it chooses, and it generally goes straight to the centre. Many of these simple flowers, therefore, have large numbers of stamens which stand up in a crown in the middle, so that the bee must touch and stir some of them as he dives in the centre for the honey.