Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1885 — DECEITFUL PLANTS. [ARTICLE]

DECEITFUL PLANTS.

Innocent Flies the Victims of Misplaced Confidence. The majority of legitimate flowers (if I may be allowed the expression) get themselves decently fertilized by bees and butterflies, who may be considered as representing the regular trade, and who carry the fecundating pollen on their heads and proboscis from one blossom to another while engaged in their usual business of gathering honey all the day from every opening flower. But ratflesia. on the contrary, has positively act uired a fallacious external resemblance to warm tea and a decidedly high flavor on purpose to take in the too trustful Sumatran flies. When a fly sights and scents one, he (or rather she) proceeds at once to settle in the cup, and there lay a number of eggs in what it naturally regards as a very fine decaying carcass. Then, having dusted itself over in the process with plenty of pollen from this first flower, it flies away confidingly to the next promising bud, in search both of food for itself and of a fitting nursery for its future little ones. In doing so, it of course fertilizes all the blossoms that it visits one after another by dusting them successively with each other’s pollen. When the young grubs are hatched out, however, they discover the base deception all too late, and perish miserably in their fallacious bed, the helpless victims of misplaced parental confidence. Even as Zeuxis deceived the very birds with his painted grapes, so ratflesia deceives the flies themselves by its ingenious mimicry as a putrid beefsteak. In the fierce competition of tropical life, it has found out by simple experience that dishonesty is the best policy. On most mountain bogs in Britain one can still find a few pretty white flowers of the rare and curious grass of Parnassus. They have each five snowy petals, and at the base of every petal stands a little forked organ, with eight or nine thread-like points, terminated, apparently, by a small round drop of pellucid honey. Touch one of the drops with your finger, and lo! you will find it is a solid ball or gland. The flower, in fact, is only a plaything at producing honey. Yet so easily are the flies for whom it caters taken in by a showy advertisement, that not only will they light on the blossoms and try most industriously for a long time to extract a little honey from the dry bulbs, but even after they have been compelled to give up the attempt as vain they will light again upon a second flower, and go through the whole performance, da capo. The grass of Parnassus thus generally manages to get its flowers fertilized with no expenditure of honey at all on its part. Still, it is not a wholly and hopelessly abandoned flower, like some others, for it does really secrete a little genuine honey quite away from the sham drops, though to an extent entirely incommensurate with the pretended display. Most of the flowers specially affected by carrion flies have a lurid red color and a distinct smell of bad meat. Few of them, however, are quite so cruel in their habits as rafflesia. For the most part, they attract insects by their appearance and odor, but reward their services with a little honey and other allurements. This is the case with the curious English fly-orchid, whose dull purple lip is covered with tiny drops of nectar, licked off by the fertilizing flies. The very malodorous carrion flowers (or stapelias) are visited by bluebottles and fleshflies, while an allied form actually sets a trap for the fly’s proboscis, which catches the inse-t by its hairs, and Compels him to give a smuqr pull in order to free himself; th s pull dislodges the pollen, and so secures the desired cross fertilization. The Alpine butterwort sets a somewhat similar gin so rigorously that when a weak fly is caught in it he cannot disengage himself, and there perishes wretchedly, like a hawk in a keeper’s trap.— Comhill Magazine.