Deep Sucking. Aglais io, European Peacock Butterfly, and Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, Océ-weerd, Meuse Corridor, Venlo, The Netherlands
A joy of Spring to see again Aglais io, that colorful European Peacock Butterfly! Here it's on another pleasure of the season, golden Dandelion, or Taraxacum officinale.
We all marvel at the wonderful proboscis - tongue plus other supporting structures - that enables a Butterfly to partake of the nectar of flowers.
It's also highly interesting to see the structure of the floret with which that tongue has to cope. So I've added an inset showing a single floret of Dandelion. On the left a toothed petal - which is thought to resemble a Lion's tooth; hence the name Dandelion derived from the French. Then the fancy bilobed or two-headed stigma and at the bottom of the supporting style, with feathery pappus surrounding it, the ovary. That sticky stigma is covered with grains of pollen, small but just visible in this photo.
So where are the stamens, the male part yielding that pollen? Well, this particular Dandelion is well along its lifepath so you have to look carefully. Dandelions - differently from many other flowers - develop a style, pistil and stigma after their stamens. The five stamens fuse together to form a tube which is the conduit for pollen to the ovary. In the photo you can just see two supporting relicts of them at the very bottom of the style.
Nectar is to be found at the bottom of that tube, and hence Peacock's tongue will have to reach down, down, down to access that Sweet Stuff.
Deep Sucking. Aglais io, European Peacock Butterfly, and Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, Océ-weerd, Meuse Corridor, Venlo, The Netherlands
A joy of Spring to see again Aglais io, that colorful European Peacock Butterfly! Here it's on another pleasure of the season, golden Dandelion, or Taraxacum officinale.
We all marvel at the wonderful proboscis - tongue plus other supporting structures - that enables a Butterfly to partake of the nectar of flowers.
It's also highly interesting to see the structure of the floret with which that tongue has to cope. So I've added an inset showing a single floret of Dandelion. On the left a toothed petal - which is thought to resemble a Lion's tooth; hence the name Dandelion derived from the French. Then the fancy bilobed or two-headed stigma and at the bottom of the supporting style, with feathery pappus surrounding it, the ovary. That sticky stigma is covered with grains of pollen, small but just visible in this photo.
So where are the stamens, the male part yielding that pollen? Well, this particular Dandelion is well along its lifepath so you have to look carefully. Dandelions - differently from many other flowers - develop a style, pistil and stigma after their stamens. The five stamens fuse together to form a tube which is the conduit for pollen to the ovary. In the photo you can just see two supporting relicts of them at the very bottom of the style.
Nectar is to be found at the bottom of that tube, and hence Peacock's tongue will have to reach down, down, down to access that Sweet Stuff.