“Then what is the use of them?” Tom asked.
“I’ll show you,” said Uncle George. As he spoke he took up a fresh daisy flower.
“Look!” he said, “what a pretty flower it is, with its golden centre and its bright white edge tipped with red. It is like a beautiful star.”
Then he pulled off all the large white florets.
“Look at it now,” he said. “It is a dingy, ugly little flower. Without its white florets it would not be seen at all. Now perhaps you can tell me what the large white florets are for.”
“To help us to see them at a distance,” said Frank.
“So that bees and other flying insects may be able to see them,” said Uncle George.
“Insects visit flowers for honey, and, in doing so, carry the yellow dust, or pollen, from flower to flower. This pollen, as I told you before, has to do with the making of seeds: and stronger seeds are produced if the pollen comes from another flower.
“Now compare a white floret with a yellow one, and you will notice still another difference between them.
“Round the stigma—that is the forked tube which leads to the seed-vessel—in the yellow florets, there is a yellow ring of stamens, or pollen-boxes. It is shaped like a little barrel with its ends knocked out, and the stigma grows right up through it.