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.