From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[before 21 July 1855]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 29, 21 July 1855, p. 487
Summary:
Reports on observing hive-bees visiting the leaves of vetch and bean and sucking the minute drops of nectar secreted by the glands on the underside of the stipulae. This phenomenon proves wrong those botanists who believe nectar to be a special secretion for the sole purpose of luring insects to visit flowers and thus to aid in their fertilisation.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project