Flowers

All of the flowers smelt good. This is most likely to attract insects to pollinate them.

     The flowers are not open very much, but enough for a bee to be able to go in and pollinate it. The reason that it is not open much may be that it is better protected than it would be if it completely opened up.

      The flower is pink and has many pedals. The plant that it is attached to has thorns, which are designed to protect the flower.

     You can see it very well in any of these pictures, but there is a moldy fungi on some of the flowers.   The fungi is living of the plant, and the plant may also be benefiting from this situation.

     You can see that the pedals are white in the middle, then become pinker and pinker the farther from the center they are.

      There are small pieces of pollen, the males, surrounding a thicker stem, which is the female.

      Above is some pollen that came off of the flower when I gave it a gentle shake. The pollen for this flower is yellow.

I found the Pincher Bug above inside of the flower. These, along with tiny beetles, pollinate the flowers by transferring the male pollen to the female part of the flower. 

     Though I did not see any insects, I would guess that small flies might pollinate these. The opening of the flower is too small for a bee, and its position on the tree would make it hard for beetles to climb up to pollinate it.

If i had to compare the smell of the flower to something, I would say it is a similar smell to shampoo.

     The little purple things on the right are male pollen, and the white stem on the left is the female part of the flower.