WHITE AND GREENISH FLOWERS
"The transition from wind-fertilization to insect-fertilization
and the first traces of adaptation to insects, could only be due
to the influence of quite short-lipped insects with feebly
developed color sense. The most primitive flowers are therefore
for the most part simple, widely open, regular,
devoid of nectar
or with their nectar unconcealed and easily accessible, and
greenish, white, or yellow in color.... Lepidoptera, by the
thinness, sometimes by the length, of their tongues, were able to
produce special modifications. Through their agency were
developed flowers with long and narrow tubes, whose colors and
time of opening were in relation to the tastes and habits of
their visitors." - Hermann Muller.
"Of all colors, white is the prevailing one; and of white flowers
a considerably larger proportion smell sweetly than of any other
color, namely, 14.6 per cent; of red only 8.2 per cent are
odoriferous. The fact of a large proportion of white flowers
smelling sweetly may depend in part on those which are fertilized
by moths requiring the double aid of conspicuousness in the dusk
and of odor. So great is the economy of Nature, that most flowers
which are fertilized by crepuscular or nocturnal insects emit
their odor chiefly or exclusively in the evening." - Charles
Darwin.
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