Gentiana asclepiadea and Bees

Abstract

THIS gentian is very abundant on the mountain slopes round Engelberg, as visitors to that part of Switzerland well know. As I was botanising in the neighbourhood, in the autumn of this year, I observed that most of the flowers were pierced with a round hole at the base. Presently I saw a bee come to one of the pierced flowers, and thrust in its proboscis in search of honey. The flowers of this beautiful, sweet-smelling gentian are long and funnel-shaped, and very contracted at the base, and, as the bee that visited it was a “fair large” one, like Sir Torre's diamond, and not of the narrow hive-bee type, it could not possibly have effected its purpose by entering the flower in the usual way at the top, and had no doubt resorted to this method of extracting the honey. I only saw this one kind of bee visit the flowers, but I saw many of them at work, and all acted in the same way. One of them came to some of the flowers, which I had gathered, as I held them in my hand. I cannot say that I saw a single flower actually pierced by a bee; the day was warm, even for Engelberg, and the bees were very quick in their movements, which increased the difficulty of observation, but that the bees themselves, were the agents, in making the holes, there can be no reason to doubt.