Sentence:  Three of these only were protected from us by stern commandment : the roses , whose petals might not be collected until they had fallen , to be made into perfume or rose tea to drink ; the peonies , whose tight sticky buds would be blighted by the laying on of a finger , although they were not apparently harmed by the <WSD>ants</WSD> that crawled over them ; and the poppies . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  social insect living in organized colonies; characteristically the males and fertile queen have wings during breeding season; wingless sterile females are the workers