Dr. W. Ogle has communicated to me a curious case. He gathered in
Switzerland 100 flower-stems of the common blue variety of the monkshood
(Aconitum napellus), and not a single flower was perforated; he then
gathered 100 stems of a white variety growing close by, and every one of
the open flowers had been perforated. (11/13. Dr. Ogle 'Popular Science
Review' July 1869 page 267. Bailey 'American Naturalist' November 1873
page 690. Gentry ibid May 1875 page 264.) This surprising difference in
the state of the flowers may be attributed with much probability to the
blue variety being distasteful to bees, from the presence of the acrid
matter which is so general in the Ranunculaceae, and to its absence in
the white variety in correlation with the loss of the blue tint.
According to Sprengel, this plant is strongly proterandrous (11/14. 'Das
Entdeckte' etc. page 278.); it would therefore be more or less sterile
unless bees carried pollen from the younger to the older flowers.
Consequently the white variety, the flowers of which were always bitten
instead of being properly entered by the bees, would fail to yield the
full number of seeds and would be a comparatively rare plant, as Dr.
Ogle informs me was the case.
Bees show much skill in their manner of working, for they always make
their holes from the outside close to the spot where the nectar lies
hidden within the corolla.
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