TONGUES AND TUBES MARGARET W. MORLEY MARGARET W. MORLEY is an American author and teacher. This selection is taken from "Flowers and their Friends." A flower tube is a safe place to keep stamens and nectar. It is often protected by scales or hairs or a sticky juice, 5 so that ants and other small insects are given a gentle but convincing hint to keep out. Some flowers like crawling insects, and these have wide-spreading corollas where the nectar is easily reached; but a long tube is a warning signpost to many a tiny visitor. 10 If, however, there comes along a large insect with a long tongue, he will be sure to find a welcome in many a flower with a tube. If he is faithful and industrious in his work of collecting honey, he will soon find that the flower whose nectar he likes best has a tube which is 15 just the same shape and size as his tongue; and, what is more, it is in the most convenient position for him to reach it. It seems to be his flower, and no doubt it is, for flowers have a way of making their tubes to fit the tongues of 20 those that love them best. Not that they do all the fitting, for no doubt the tongues also grow to fit the flowers. Of course other insects with similar tongues can also get the honey, and a good many whose tongues are quite different can reach more or less of it; but the bulk of the honey is for the favorite visitor. He can reach clear to the bottom of the nectary, and in some cases, where the favorite insect has a very long and very slender tongue, the spur or tube will be so long and slender that none 5 but that particular kind of insect can get the honey at all. The white azalea, often called swamp honeysuckle, and the large night-flying moths are great friends. The azalea has provided honey for her guests, and protects it, too, against other visitors, except the bees and humming birds. 10 The humming birds are welcome, and the bees have a way of coming whether they are welcome or not. If you go just at dark to where the azaleas are blooming, you will not see the moths, but you will hear them. The chief sounds in the woods are the rustling of twigs 15 and leaves in the breeze, the calling of frogs from the ponds, the noises of insects, and the voices of the nightflying birds. Then all at once there comes another sound, -a steady buzz-z-z that draws nearer and nearer until it 5 seems to be close to your ear. This is the moth come to visit the honeysuckle. And no doubt the honeysuckle is glad to feel the breeze of these fanning wings and to feel the long tongue enter the tube, for the moth touches the out-reaching stigma and 10 leaves there pollen from some other flower whose honey it has enjoyed. From the stamens it detaches pollen grains to carry to another flower; and this too, no doubt, gives happiness to the azalea, for it makes its pollen not for its own use, but for the sake of its friends. 15 The azalea has long, upturned filaments that reach far out of the tube, and the style is yet longer, so that only a large insect or a humming bird, collecting honey while on the wing, can really give pollen to the stigma. Bees alight back of the anthers and take the honey. 20 If they want pollen they collect it from the stamens without touching the stigma, except once in a while by accident, as it were. So, however much the majority of flowers may love and respect the bee, our azalea has no liking for her. Besides, the bee has a bad habit of biting a hole 25 in the flower tube and getting the honey that way. This would be a disreputable performance on the part of any insect, and if bees are not ashamed of it they ought to be. The azalea does several things for the moth it loves. It may be that its beautiful white color is for his sake; certainly, if the flower were not white the moth would not be likely to find it, since he flies abroad in the evening, when it is dark in the damp thickets where the honey- 5 suckle likes to grow. Azalea has a sweet white corolla with a long slender tube containing nectar for moth or humming bird, but not for the bees. Watch a bee try to reach it some time. If the flower is between you and the light, you can see the bee's brown 10 tongue through the flower tube; she appears to be standing on her toes and reaching in as far as she can; she darts out her tongue to its full length, and you can see it wriggling and straining to get to the abundant honey low down in the flower tube. But it is of no use to try; the 15 tongue is too short and the tube too long. The honeysuckle tube was not made to fit the bee's tongue, and the bee can get only the outer rim of the honey. Perhaps this is why the bee so often breaks in the back way. Besides being white, the azalea flowers grow in clusters, 20 which makes them yet more visible in the dusk. They exhale, too, a delicious and far-reaching perfume, and this is a note of invitation to the moths. Instead of writing a note on a sheet of perfumed paper, the honeysuckle sends the perfume without the paper. 25 The moth understands the message, and knowing that the white azalea "requests the pleasure" of his company that evening, puts on his best manners, since he cannot change his clothes, and goes. The white azalea is so sweet and so pretty, it would not be strange if other uninvited guests than bees were to 5 visit it. No doubt the ants and bugs and gnats and flies would be glad to, but the azalea has a very inhospitable way of receiving such would-be guests. Over the outside of the lower part of the white tube and running in a line to the very tips of the petals are 10 tiny white hairs with black tips. These are the azalea's bodyguard. Each tip exudes a drop of sticky liquid. Fine, sticky hairs cover the stems and the leaves too; and the unfortunate insect that tries to crawl up to the flower is sure to get wings and legs hopelessly entangled 15 and stuck together. Only large fellows, like bees, who are strong enough to pull themselves free, are able to defy this bodyguard. You will sometimes meet our sweet azalea covered on the outside with little marauders who wanted to steal her 20 honey but could not, because the bodyguard caught them and held them fast. Not all flowers with tubes succeed so well as the azalea in keeping their honey for the visitors who can do them the most good. Look at the morning-glory, for instance; 25 it has hairs at the entrance to the nectaries which the ants cannot readily pass, but which the bees can push aside. The openings to the nectary are large enough to |