Who was Mollie Large? That was the first thing I wondered. Her name just rolls off your tongue! If a current horticultural business rule of thumb, that the name of a plant has a HUGE effect on its popularity, held true over a hundred years ago this bee plant had a leg up on the competition.
This illustration is from A.I. Root's 1882 ABC of Bee Culture.
Spider Plant (Cleome pungens)
American beekeepers speak in glowing terms of thisplant for bee forage. The secretion of honey is describedas enormous, and unlike most bee flowers, the bloomsopen early in the morning and the afternoon, thus pre-venting the evaporation of the nectar.
In hot weather the evaporation of nectar from flowers isconsiderable; indeed, more so than is generally thought bybee-keepers. Therefore, honey-secreting plants that do notopen their petals until after the scorching heat of the dayis past, will be invaluable to the apiarist, especially as inthe case of the spiderplant, which produces honey in suchabundance.
Mr. Root says, in speaking about the spider plant (page 221,“A B C ”) : “ Not only does a single floweret produce a large drop, but some of them produce a great many drops.Last evening we made observations by lamp-light, and before nine o’clock the globules of honey were of the sizeof large shot.
The crowning experiment of all took place this morning. I was up a little after five o’clock, and with the aid of a teaspoon I dipped honey enough fromthree or four plants to fill a two-drachm phial, such as weuse in the queen cages, a little more than half full. The honey in some of the flowerets had collected in a large quantity, so large that it spilled out, and actually streamed on the ground.
I have called this honey, but in reality itis raw nectar, such as is found in clover and other flowers. The taste is a pure sweet, slightly dashed with a mostbeautiful, delicate flavour, resembling somewhat that of the best new maple molasses. The honey will be as white as the whitest linden, so far as I can judge. With the aid ofa lamp, I evaporated the nectar down to thick honey.
You can see something of what the bees have to do, whenI tell you that I had in bulk only about one-fifth part asmuch as when I commenced. You can also see that wenow have some accurate figures with which to estimate theamount of honey which may be obtained from an acre ofhoney plants.”
The seed should be sown in April in a pan or box, using fine soil. Give the protection of a frame or greenhouse(see chapter on the raising of plants from seed).Plants raised from seed in April and grown on, will flower in August. Plant these two feet apart each way.
This wonderful photo of a bee on the spider flower is from the blog, It's Not Work, It's Gardening!
There are more bee and flower photos for the spider plant. One clearly shows the HUGE droplet of nectar that forms at the center of the petals. Look closely at this photo and you may see a blur...that is the droplet.
Below is an ad from our old friend Samuel Wilson, not for Mollie O. Large, but for the specie. I just like the bees. Plus my favorite horticultural engraver, Albert Blanc, did the art work!
No comments:
Post a Comment