but of its cousin. A Bartlett pear wants pollen from another variety of pear altogether. Fruit growers know this and plant different kinds of pear trees in an orchard. If not too distant, the pollen will find the eggs that need it.
So, in blossom time, there is a great deal of blowing about and visiting and exchanging of gifts between flowers. They seem to be amusing themselves; tossing their pretty locks, swinging their silken petticoats in the breeze, and gossiping with bees and butterflies about what is going on in neighboring fields and orchards. One can fancy a little sugar pear tree saying to a bumble bee: "Put some of my nice yellow pollen on your legs and take it over to Mrs. Bartlett, with my compliments. I'm sure it's what she needs for her little seed babies. Just press the button and she'll do the rest."
corn plant
From the tassels at the top of the stalk the pollen falls on the silk at the end of the ears which are sprouting below.
Isn't that friendly? The plant world is very busy and helpful when it seems to be playing. The tall, plumy tassels at the tops of corn stalks, swing much as you do under the maple tree. But those tassels are so loaded with pollen that you can often see a brown dust hovering over a corn field. As the wind blows the tassels, the pollen is shaken down in clouds. It falls on the corn silks below. Each one of those silks goes back to little eggs on the baby cob. A pollen grain must fall on the hollow tip of each silk, and slide a hair root down the long tube to the egg, or there would be no kernels, or seeds, on the ear of corn.
The wind is the only messenger of the pines and palms, the grasses and grains, and many of the straight-veined plants. The lilies and other bulb plants of the straight-veined family, have bee and insect visitors. Nearly all of the net-veined plants have such sweet blossoms and fruits that bees and butterflies visit them. When fruits and seeds are ripe the winds blow them abroad, the birds eat them, fly far away, north and south, sometimes hundreds of miles, and plant the seeds in other countries. In this way plants were scattered long before men began to grow them for food. The soil and rain and sunshine were not always the same, so plants had to change. Many varieties of palms and pines, grasses and wild fruits were made. The plants that traveled and had the greatest number of visitors, changed the most.
