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Updated: May 26, 2025
In the Columbine, Aquilegia, the nectary is imagined to be like the neck and body of a bird, and the two petals standing upon each side to represent wings; whence its name of columbine, as if resembling a nest of young pigeons fluttering whilst their parent feeds them. The importance of the nectary in the economy of vegetation is explained at large in the notes on part the first.
I may add, as an instance of this, and of a striking case of correlation, that I have recently observed in some garden pelargoniums, that the central flower of the truss often loses the patches of darker colour in the two upper petals; and that when this occurs, the adherent nectary is quite aborted; when the colour is absent from only one of the two upper petals, the nectary is only much shortened.
When the colour is absent from only one of the two upper petals, the nectary is not quite aborted but is much shortened. With respect to the development of the corolla, Sprengel's idea that the ray-florets serve to attract insects, whose agency is highly advantageous, or necessary for the fertilisation of these plants, is highly probable; and if so, natural selection may have come into play.
I may add, as an instance of this, and of a striking case of correlation, that I have recently observed in some garden pelargoniums, that the central flower of the truss often loses the patches of darker colour in the two upper petals; and that when this occurs, the adherent nectary is quite aborted; when the colour is absent from only one of the two upper petals, the nectary is only much shortened.
If an orchid has a nectary one inch long, an insect's tongue of equivalent length is implied; a nectary six inches in length likewise implies a tongue six inches long. What have you to say in regard to an orchid which flourishes here in Madagascar possessing a long nectary as slender as a knitting-needle and eleven inches in length?
On this account the vegetable impregnation of aquatic plants is performed in the air; and it is probable that the honey-cup or nectary of vegetables requires to be open to the air, that the anthers and stigmas of the flower may have food of a more oxygenated kind than the common vegetable sap-juice.
The purpose of this extraordinary arrangement unique among orchids, I believe will be discovered one day, for purpose there is, no doubt; to judge by analogy, it may be supposed that the insect upon which Onc. serratum depends for fertilization likes to stand upon this ring while thrusting its proboscis into the nectary.
At first in upright position, they soon assume the forward inclination, as previously described. The nectary is about the length of a bumblebee's tongue, and is, moreover, so amply expanded at the throat below the stigma as to comfortably admit its wedge-shaped head. The pollen discs are here very close together, and are protected within a membraneous cup, in which they sit as in a socket.
I passed the autumn of 1857 in North Wales, where the foxglove was very abundant, and watched the flowers throughout the season, but only once saw a small bee reach the nectary, though many were seen trying in vain to do so.
I may add, as an instance of this fact, and as a striking case of correlation, that in many pelargoniums the two upper petals in the central flower of the truss often lose their patches of darker colour; and when this occurs, the adherent nectary is quite aborted, the central flower thus becoming peloric or regular.
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