File:The tree book - A popular guide to a knowledge of the trees of North America and to their uses and cultivation (1920) (14760070956).jpg

Identifier: treebookpopularg1920roge (find matches)
Title: The tree book : A popular guide to a knowledge of the trees of North America and to their uses and cultivation
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Rogers, Julia Ellen, b. 1866
Subjects: Trees
Publisher: New York : Doubleday, Page
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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evergreen. Foliage used for winter decora-tion of houses and churches, and to trim fruit stands in citymarkets. Along with the rhododendrons in June and July the mountainlaurel hides its shining evergreen leaves with flower clusters largerthan any the rhododendron bears. At least it seems so, for theclusters lie close, cheek by cheek, quite subordinating the foliage,making often a great mass a foot across, upon a single slenderbranch. Smaller than the rhododendron in blooms, the laurel showsmore exquisite colouring, and more interesting and beautifulforms from bud to seed. First, the buds, little fluted cones ofvivid pink, make with the green of the new leaves one of thefinest colour combinations to be found in any shrub. The largestones open first, spreading into wide, 5-lobed corollas with tenpockets in a circle around the base of each. Ten stamens standabout the free central pistil, and the anther of each is hid in apocket, its filament bent back. This is a curious contrivance, 420
Text Appearing After Image:
Copyright, 1905, by Doubleday, Page & Company MOUNTAIN LAUREL (Kalma latt:folia \ The Heaths : the Rhododendron and the Mountain Laurel and well worth looking into. There is a bee lighting on the border,and probing the tube of the corolla for honey. Her clumsinessmakes her Natures agent for the fertilising of these flowers.As she steps on a bent filament, it straightens itself with a spring,the hidden anther is drawn forth and bangs against her furrybody, dusting her well with the pollen, which comes in ajet out of a small pore at the top of the anther. Themountain laurel is not self-fertile. Only insects, gatheringnectar by the hour, fertilise these flowers. They brushtheir pollen-laden bodies against the erect pistils, thusbringing about cross-fertilisation wherever they go. A nettied over a mass of blossoms, excluding the bees, will defeatNature, for the stamens are never released^ though the pollencells are ripe and waiting, as is the sticky stigma in theirmidst. No seed will

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