Deceptions and false pretences of this sort are somewhat less common among plants than among animals; but still, they occur, and that not infrequently. "What? Plants deceive?" you cry. "The innocent little flowers? How can they do it? Surely that is impossible!" By no means. I have watched plant life pretty closely for a good many years now, and every year the conviction is forced upon me more and more profoundly that whatever animals do, plants do almost equally. There is no vile trick or ruse or stratagem that they cannot imitate: no base deception that they will not practise. They lie and steal with the worst; they hold out false baits for deluded insects, and hide real fly-traps with honeyed words and sweet secretions.
As a good illustration among English plants, look at the Grass of Parnassus, that beautiful, dishonest bog-herb, with glossy-green leaves and pure white blossoms, which is considered the especial guerdon of poets. I found a whole nest of it once in a swamp near Cromer, and carried off a bunch of the lovely flowers as an appropriate offering to Mr. Swinburne who was stopping at Sidestrand. Yet this poet's flower, dainty and delicate as it is—you see in No. 11 its counterfeit presentment—is not ashamed to deceive the poor bees and flies in a way which the Heathen Chinee would have considered unsportsmanlike. It is a sham, a commercial sham of the worst type. It lives for the most part on wet moors among mountains, or else in the boggy hollows between blown sand-hills by the sea: and when its milk-white flowers star the ground in such spots, it forms one of the loveliest ornaments of our English flora. But trust it not, oh butterfly: it is fooling thee! From a distance, it looks as if it were full of honey; it advertises well: but at close quarters 'tis a wooden nutmeg; it turns out to be nothing better than an arrant humbug.
11.—GRASS OF PARNASSUS, DISPLAYING AND ADVERTISING ITS IMITATION HONEY.
The deception is managed in this disgraceful fashion. Inside each petal lies a curious ten or twelve-fingered organ, which is in reality an abortive stamen. No. 12 shows you one such petal removed, with the false honey-glands drawn on a larger scale than in the other illustration. The ten-fingered stamen bears at its tip a number of translucent yellow drops, which look like pure nectar. But they are nothing of the kind; I regret to say, they are solid—solid—a commercial falsehood. They glisten like drops: but they are mere glassy imitations; and they are put there with intent to deceive, in order to attract flies and other insects, which come to quaff the supposed nectar, and so unwittingly fertilize the seeds, while they are muddling about perplexed among the pretended honey-glands, without getting paid one sip for their toil and trouble. This is, of course, a flagrant case of obtaining services under false pretences; it deserves fourteen days' without the option of a fine. As a rule, in similar cases, the flies are rewarded for their kind offices as carriers by the merited wage of a drop of honey. But the Grass of Parnassus, mendacious herb, pretends to be purveying a specially fine quantity and quality of nectar, while in reality it offers only a hard, glassy knob with nothing in it. This pays the plant, of course, because the blossoms do not have to go on producing honey fresh and fresh; a mere inexpensive show does just as well as the real article: "Our customers like it!" but the language of the flies when they discover the fraud is something just awful.
12.—A SINGLE PETAL, TO SHOW THE CHARACTER OF THE SHAM HONEY.
Nor is this by any means a solitary example of plant depravity. The whole group of pitcher-plants, for instance, cruelly manure themselves by means of living insects in the most treacherous fashion. These lovely and wicked plants live, without exception, in wet and boggy soil, where they cannot get enough animal matter for manure in the ordinary way by the roots: so they lay themselves out instead to capture and absorb the tissues of insects. For this horrid purpose, they twist their leaves into deep pitchers which catch and hold the rain water, and so form reservoirs to drown their prey. Then they entice insects by bright colours to their traps, and allure them to enter by secreting honey at the top of the pitcher. Hairs point downward inside; these allow the flies to walk on to their fate, bribed as they go by lines of nectar: but if they try to return, ah, then they find their mistake: the hairs prevent them, after the fashion of a lobster-pot. Thus they walk on and on till they reach the water, when they are swamped and clotted in a decaying mass, from which the treacherous plant draws manure at last for its own purposes. The pitchers are thus at once traps to catch animals, and stomachs to digest them.
Another and still odder case of deceptiveness in plants is shown by a curious group of South African flowers, the Hydaoras and Stapelias. These queer and malodorous herbs have very large and rather handsome but fleshy blossoms, an inch or two across, dappled and spotted just like decaying meat. They live in the dry and almost desert region, where carrion-flies abound. Such flies lay their eggs and hatch out their grubs for the most part in half-eaten carcasses of antelopes or smaller animals killed and in part devoured by lions and other beasts of prey. So the flowers have taken to imitating dead meat. They are a lurid red in colour, with livid livery patches, and they have a strong and unpleasant smell of decaying animal matter. The flies, deceived by the scent, flock to them to lay their eggs, and in so doing carry out the real object of the plant by fertilizing the blossoms. But, of course, the whole thing is a vile sham; for when the maggots hatch out, the flower has died, and there is no food for them, so they perish of starvation. Dr. Blackmore, of Salisbury, once gave me some of these curious plants and flowers: I noticed that in the sunlight, where they smelt just like decomposing meat, they attracted dozens of bluebottle flies and other carrion insects.
Protective resemblance also occurs among plants: for in the same dry South African region, where every green thing gets nibbled down in the rainless season, certain ice-plants and milk-weeds have acquired the trick of forming tubers or stems exactly like the pebbles among which they grow: so that when the leaves die down in the dry weather, the tuber is not distinguishable from the stones all round it. Such tubers are really reservoirs of living material destined to carry the life of the plant over the dead season: as soon as rain comes again, they put forth fresh green leaves at once, and grow on after their sleep as if nothing had happened. Even terrifying attitudes are not unknown in the vegetable world: for one of the uses of the movements in the Sensitive Plant is almost certainly to frighten animals. Browsing creatures that come near the bushes in their native woods see the leaves shrink back and curl up when touched, and are afraid to eat a tree that has so evidently a spirit in it. The Squirting Cucumber of the Mediterranean, again, alarms goats and cattle by discharging its ripe fruits explosively in their faces the moment the stem is touched. In this case the primary object is no doubt the dispersal of the seeds, which squirt out elastically as the fruit jumps off; but to frighten browsing enemies is a secondary advantage. There can be no question as to the reality of the plant's hostile intention, because the fruits also contain a pungent juice, which discharges itself at the same instant into the eyes of the assailant. As I have received a volley of this irritating liquid more than once in my own face (in the pursuit of science) I can testify personally on the best of evidence that it is distinctly painful. The tactics of the Squirting Cucumber in first frightening you, and then injecting acrid juice into your eyes, are thus exactly similar to the plan of action pursued by the angry larva of the Puss Moth.