But plants, like humans, are capricious creatures. If the meadow-
sweet always elected to grow in damp ground whose rising mists
would clog the pores of its leaves, doubtless they would be pro-
tected with a woolly absorbent, as its cousins are.
Inasmuch as perfume serves as an attraction to the more
highly specialized, zesthetic insects, not required by the spiraeas,
our meadow-sweet has none, in spite of its misleading name.
Small bees (especially Andrenidae), flies (Syrphidae), and beetles,
among other visitors, come in great numbers, seeking the accessible
pollen, and, in this case, nectar also, secreted in a conspicuous
orange-colored disk. When a floret first opens, or even before, the
already mature stigmas overtop the incurved, undeveloped sta-
mens, so that any visitor dusted from other clusters cross-fertilizes
it; but as the stigmas remain fresh even after the stamens have
risen and shed their abundant pollen, it follows that in long-con-
tinued stormy weather, when few insects are flying, the flowers
fertilize themselves. Self-fertilization with insect help must often
occur in the flower’s second stage. The fragrant yellowish-white
English Meadow-sweet (S. ulmaria), often cultivated in old-
fashioned gardens here, has escaped locally.
