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Title: Plants and their children
Author: Frances Theodora Parsons
Illustrator: Alice Josephine Smith
Release date: October 23, 2023 [eBook #71942]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: American Book Company, 1896
Credits: Bob Taylor, the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLANTS AND THEIR CHILDREN ***
Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
PLANTS
AND THEIR CHILDREN
BY
MRS. WILLIAM STARR DANA
AUTHOR OF “HOW TO KNOW THE WILD FLOWERS”
_ILLUSTRATED BY_
ALICE JOSEPHINE SMITH
[Illustration: Decoration]
NEW YORK [Illustration: Decoration] CINCINNATI
[Illustration: Decoration] CHICAGO
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY.
DANA’S PLANTS.
W. P. 2
[Illustration: Flowers]
PREFACE
A child’s reading book, it seems to me, should secure for the
child three things,—practice in the art of reading, amusement, and
instruction. Whether my little book is fitted to attain this threefold
object, others must decide; but in laying it before the public, let me
urge careful attention to a few suggestions.
[Illustration: Flower]
1. As the book is arranged so as to begin with the opening of the
school year and to follow it to its close, the interest of pupils will
be increased by reading the different chapters during the seasons to
which they refer.
2. The teacher should exercise judgment as to the omission of any
chapter or group of chapters which may seem beyond the comprehension of
the class. With a little care, such an omission may nearly always be
made without injury to the usefulness of the rest of the book.
3. Specimens of the objects described, when these can be found in the
locality, should always be on exhibition in the schoolroom. Whenever
possible, the children themselves should collect and handle these
specimens. If for any reason this collection by the children cannot be
accomplished, the teacher should not fail to anticipate the readings,
and to provide the objects mentioned.
By the observance of these simple and practicable suggestions, it
is believed that, while the children are being trained in the art
of reading, their powers of observation and of reasoning will be
developed, and that they will be inspired with a lifelong interest in
nature. The child’s mind is peculiarly alive to the charm of nature
when she is studied in detail, and through her it can be trained to
observe accurately and to reason logically.
Through the neglect of nature study, the wits of the country child lose
just the sharpening they most need, to say nothing of a stimulus and
delight which can ill be spared by one whose mental life is apt to be
monotonous.
The wits of the city child may secure in other ways the sharpening so
essential to success in life; yet the training afforded by a logical
study of plants, and the pleasure which such a study, rightly directed,
is sure to yield, are as invaluable to him as to his country cousin.
Experience having proved to my keenest satisfaction that almost
invariably children can be interested in stories of plants and _their_
children, to the children of the land I offer this little book, in the
earnest hope that its pages may lead at least some few of them to find
in life a new joy and a deeper meaning.
The aid derived from many sources in the preparation of “Plants and
their Children” is heartily acknowledged; but more especially I wish to
extend my thanks to Messrs. Holt & Co. for their courtesy in allowing
the reproduction of several cuts from their valuable and interesting
publication, “The Natural History of Plants,” translated from the
German of Kerner von Marilaun.
[Illustration: Flower]
CONTENTS
PART I.—FRUITS AND SEEDS
PAGE
In the Orchard 9
The Story of the Bee 16
The Apple’s Treasures 19
What a Plant lives for 21
The World without Plants 24
How the Apple shields its Young 27
Some Cousins of the Apple 31
Uneatable Fruits 34
More Cousins of the Apple 36
Still more Cousins 39
In the Woods 41
Why Seeds travel 50
Some Little Tramps 52
Seed Sailboats 56
Winged Seeds 61
Shooting Seeds 63
The Chestnut and Other Seeds 67
Some Strange Stories 69
PART II.—YOUNG PLANTS
How the Baby Plant lives 75
A Schoolroom Garden 79
A Schoolroom Garden (_Concluded_) 85
Seeds as Food 89
An Impatient Plant Baby 91
A Humpbacked Plant Baby 94
PART III.—ROOTS AND STEMS
Root Hairs 99
Roots and Underground Stems 102
Above-ground Roots 106
What Few Children know 112
Plants that cannot stand alone 114
Some Habits of Stems 117
Stems and Seed Leaves 119
“Well done, Little Stem” 122
PART IV.—BUDS
Buds in Winter 125
A Happy Surprise 127
Some Astonishing Buds 129
PART V.—LEAVES
How to look at a Leaf 135
The most Wonderful Thing in the World 138
How a Plant is built 142
How a Plant’s Food is cooked 143
A Steep Climb 147
How a Plant perspires 148
How a Plant stores its Food 149
Leaf Green and Sunbeam 151
Plant or Animal? 154
How we are helped by Leaf Green and Sunbeam 156
How a Plant breathes 158
The Diligent Tree 160
Leaves and Roots 162
Leaf Veins 165
Leaf Shapes 167
Hairy Leaves 170
Woolly and “Dusty” Leaves 172
Prickles and Poison 174
Some Cruel Traps 176
More Cruel Traps 181
The Fall of the Leaf 184
PART VI.—FLOWERS
The Building Plan of the Cherry Blossom 187
Lilies 191
About Stamens 193
Flower Dust, or Pollen 196
About Pistils 197
The First Arrival 202
Pussy Willows 205
Alders and Birches 207
The Great Trees 209
The Unseen Visitor 211
Plant Packages 214
Underground Storehouses 216
Different Building Plans 217
A Celebrated Family 222
Clever Customs 225
Flowers that turn Night into Day 228
Horrid Habits 230
The Story of the Strawberry 232
A Cousin of the Strawberry 235
Another Cousin 238
Pea Blossoms and Peas 240
The Clover’s Trick 243
More Tricks 244
An Old Friend 247
The Largest Plant Family in the World 248
Robin’s Plantain, Golden-rod, and Aster 251
The Last of the Flowers 254
PART VII.—LEARNING TO SEE
A Bad Habit 257
A Country Road 261
A Holiday Lesson 264
PLANTS AND THEIR CHILDREN
PART I—FRUITS AND SEEDS
[Illustration: Fruit]
IN THE ORCHARD
Is there a nicer place in which to play than an old apple orchard?
Once under those favorite trees whose branches sweep the ground, you
are quite shut off from the great, troublesome, outside world. And how
happy and safe you feel in that green world of your own!—a world just
made for children, a world of grass and leaves and birds and flowers,
where lessons and grown-up people alike have no part.
In the lightly swinging branches you find prancing horses, and on many
a mad ride they carry you. The larger ones are steep paths leading up
mountain sides. Great chasms yawn beneath you. Here only the daring,
the cool-headed, may hope to be successful and reach the highest points
without danger to their bones.
Out here the girls bring their dolls, and play house. Nothing can make
a more interesting or a more surprising house than an apple tree,
its rooms are so many and of such curious shapes. Then, too, the
seats in these rooms are far more comfortable than the chairs used by
ordinary people in everyday houses. The doings of the Robin family are
overlooked by its windows. One is amazed to see how many fat worms
Mother Robin manages to pop down the yawning baby throats, and wonders
how baby robins ever live to grow up.
From these windows you watch the first flying lesson; and you laugh
to see the little cowards cling to the branch close by, paying little
heed to their parents’ noisy indignation. All the same, you wish that
you too might suddenly grow a pair of wings, and join the little class,
and learn to do the one thing that seems even more delightful than tree
climbing.
That you children long to be out of the schoolroom this minute, out in
the orchard so full of possibilities, I do not wonder a bit. But as the
big people have decided that from now on for some months you must spend
much of your time with lesson books, I have a plan to propose.
What do you say to trying to bring something of the outdoor places that
we love into the schoolroom, which we do not love as much as we should
if lessons were always taught in the right way?
Now let us pretend—and even grown-up people, who can do difficult sums,
and answer questions in history and geography better than children,
cannot “pretend” one half so well—now let us pretend that we are about
to spend the morning in the orchard.
Here we go, out of the schoolroom into the air and sunshine, along the
road, up the hill, till we reach the stone wall beyond which lies our
orchard.
Ah! it is good to get into the cool of the dear, friendly trees. And
just now, more than ever, they seem friendly to you boys and girls; for
they are heavy with apples,—beautiful red and golden apples, that tempt
you to clamber up into the green sea of leaves above.
Now let us “pretend” that you have had your fill, and are ready to
gather quietly about me on the long grass. But first, please, one
of you bring me an apple. Let it be well-grown and rounded, with a
rosy, sun-burned cheek; for, as we are to spend some little time with
this apple, the more perfect it is in shape, the richer in color, the
sounder all the way through, the better. It is good to be as much as
possible with things that are beautiful and wholesome and hearty, even
though they are only apples.
[Illustration: FIG. 1]
Here we have (Fig. 1) a fine specimen. What do you know, any of you,
about this apple? Perhaps this seems a strange question. But when we
see something that is fine and beautiful, is it strange that we wish to
know its history? If I see a man or a woman who seems to me all that a
man or woman should be; if he or she is fine-looking and fine-acting,
straight and strong, and beautiful and kind, and brave and generous,—I
ask, “Who is he? Where does she come from? What have they done?”
Of course, a fine apple is not so interesting as a fine man or woman,
or as a fine boy or girl. Still there is much of interest to learn even
about an apple.
None of you seems anxious to tell the apple’s story, so I shall have to
start you with some questions.
Do you remember playing in this same orchard last spring?
Yes, you have not forgotten those Saturdays in May. The trees were all
pink and white with apple blossoms. The air was sweet with fragrance,
and full of the voices of birds, and of bees that were bustling about
from flower to flower. No, indeed! you have not forgotten those happy
mornings. What is more, you never will. They are among the things that
will stay by you, and be a rest and help to you all your lives. I wish
there were no child living that might not carry with him always the
memory of May days in an apple orchard.
How has it come about, do you suppose, that these trees which in May
were covered with flowers are now heavy with apples?
Can any of you children answer this riddle? How have these great apples
managed to take the place of the delicate apple blossoms?
There are some children who keep their eyes open, and really see
what is going on about them, instead of acting as if they were quite
blind; and perhaps some such child will say, “Oh, yes! I know how it
happened. I have seen it all,” and will be able to tell the whole
story at once.
I should like very much to meet that boy or girl, and I should like to
take a country walk with him or her; for there are so few children, or
grown people either, who use both their eyes to see with, and the brain
which lies back of their eyes to think and question with, that it is a
rare treat to meet and to go about with one of them.
But I should be almost as much pleased to meet the child who says,
“Well, I know that first the blossoms come. Early in May they make the
orchard so nice to play in. But in a few days they begin to fall. Their
little white leaves come dropping down like snowflakes; and soon after,
if you climb out along the branches and look close, where there was a
blossom before, you find now a little green thing something like a knob
(Fig. 2). This tiny knob keeps growing bigger and bigger, and then you
see that it is a baby apple. As the weeks go by, the little apple grows
into a big one; and at last the green begins to fade away, and the red
and yellow to come. One day you find the great grown apple all ripe,
and ready to eat. But I never could see just what made it come like
that, such a big, heavy apple from such a little flower, and I always
wondered about it.”
[Illustration: FIG. 2]
Now, if we wonder about the things we see, we are on the right road.
The child who first “sees” what is happening around him, and then
“wonders” and asks questions, is sure to be good company to other
people and to himself. (And as one spends more time with himself
than with any one else, he is lucky if he finds himself a pleasant
companion.) Such a child has not lost the use of his eyes, as so
many of us seem to have done. And when the little brain is full of
questions, it bids fair to become a big brain, which may answer some
day the questions the world is asking.
Before I tell you just how the big apple managed to take the place of
the pretty, delicate flower, let us take a good look at this flower.
But in September apple flowers are not to be had for the asking. Not
one is to be found on all these trees. So just now we must use the
picture instead. And when May comes, your teacher will bring you a
branch bearing the beautiful blossoms; or, better still, perhaps she
will take you out into the orchard itself, and you can go over this
chapter again with the lovely living flowers before you.
[Illustration: FIG. 3]
Now, as you look at this picture of the apple flower (Fig. 3), you see
a circle made up of five pretty leaves. Sometimes these are white;
again they are pink. And in the center what do you see? Why, there you
see a quantity of odd-looking little things whose names you do not
know. They look somewhat like small, rather crooked pins; for on the
tips of most of them are objects which remind you of the head of a pin.
If you were looking at a real flower, you would see that these pin
heads were little boxes filled with a yellow dust which comes off upon
one’s fingers; and so for the present we will call them “dust boxes.”
But besides these pins—later we shall learn their real names—besides
these pins with dust boxes, we find some others which are without any
such boxes. The shape of these reminds us a little of the pegs or pins
we use in the game of tenpins. If we looked at them very closely, we
should see that there were five of them, but that these five were
joined below into one piece.
Now suppose we take the apple blossom and pull off all its pretty white
flower leaves, and all the pins with dust boxes, what will be left?
[Illustration: FIG. 4]
This picture (Fig. 4) shows you just what is left. You see what looks
like a little cup or vase. The upper part of this is cut into five
pieces, which are rolled back. In the picture one of these pieces is
almost out of sight. In the real blossom these pieces look like little
green leaves. And set into this cup is the lower, united part of those
pins which have no dust boxes on top.
I fancy that you are better acquainted with the apple blossom than
ever before, never mind how many mornings you may have spent in the
sweet-smelling, pink and white orchard. You know just what goes to make
up each separate flower, for all the many hundreds of blossoms are made
on the one plan.
And only now are you ready to hear what happened to make the apple take
the place of the blossom.
[Illustration: Flowers]
THE STORY OF THE BEE
This is what happened. And it is a true story.
One morning last May a bee set out among the flowers on a honey hunt.
Perhaps it would be more true to say that the bee set out to hunt for
the sweet stuff of which honey is made; for while this sweet stuff
is still in the flower cup it is not honey, any more than the wheat
growing in the field is bread. The wheat becomes bread later, after it
has been cut and gathered and threshed and ground, and brought into the
kitchen and there changed into bread; and the sweet stuff becomes honey
only after the bees have carried it home and worked it.
As the bee left home this particular morning, it made up its mind that
it would devote itself to the apple blossoms; for did you know that
when a bee goes flower visiting, usually it gives all its attention to
one kind of flower till it has finished that special round of visits?
So off the bee flew; and in a few moments it saw hundreds of little
pink and white handkerchiefs waving at it from the apple orchard.
What do you suppose these were, these gay little handkerchiefs?
They were the flower leaves of the apple blossoms. I call them
handkerchiefs, because, just as boys and girls sometimes wave their
handkerchiefs when they wish to signal other boys and girls, so the
apple tree uses its gay flower leaves to attract the attention of the
bee, and persuade it to visit the flowers. Of course, really, they are
not handkerchiefs at all. They would hardly be large enough for any but
fairy noses, would they?
When the bee saw so many bright handkerchiefs waving it welcome, along
it hurried; for it knew this was a signal that material for honey
making was at hand. Another minute, and it had settled upon a freshly
opened flower, and was eagerly stealing the precious sweet.
You children know, that, when you are given permission to go to the
closet for a piece of candy or cake, you are not apt to set about it
very gently. You are in too much of a hurry for that. Often you come
very near knocking everything over, in your haste to get hold of what
you want.
And bees are quite as greedy as any boy or girl could be. So our friend
dived right into the pretty flower, brushing rudely against the little
dust boxes. These, being full to overflowing with golden dust, spilled
their contents, and powdered the bee quite yellow.
Having made sure that nothing more was to be found just there, off
flew the dusty bee to the next blossom. Into this it pushed its way,
and in so doing struck those pins which have no dust boxes; and upon
their broad, flat tips fell some of the yellow dust grains with which
its body was powdered.
Now there began to happen a strange thing.
But before I tell you more, I must stop one moment to remind you that
these pins without dust boxes are joined below into one piece, and that
this piece is set deep into the green cup which holds the rest of the
flower (see Fig. 4); and I must tell you, that, if you should cut open
this cup, you would find a number of little round objects looking like
tiny green eggs.
The strange thing that began to happen was this:—
Soon after the yellow dust from the bee fell upon the flat tips of the
pins without dust boxes, the little green objects deep within the green
cup became full of life, and began to get larger. And not only this:
the green cup also seemed to feel this new life; for it too grew bigger
and bigger, and juicier and juicier, until it became the fine juicy
apple we have before us this morning.
So now you understand a little of what happened to make the great apple
take the place of the delicate blossom.
THE APPLE’S TREASURES
If we lift our apple by its stem, it hangs in the same position as when
growing on the tree (Fig. 5).
But the blossom whose place in the world is taken by this apple held
its little head proudly in the air. So let us put the apple in the same
position, and see what is left of the flower from which it has come
(Fig. 6).
[Illustration: FIG. 5]
We see the apple stem, which last May was the flower stem. This has
grown thick and strong enough to hold the apple fast to the tree till
it ripens and is ready to drop.
The upper part of the stem you cannot see, because the apple has
swelled downwards all about it, or upwards we should say, if it were
still on the tree.
[Illustration: FIG. 6]
On the top of the apple, in a little hollow, we see some crumpled
things which look like tiny withered leaves.
You remember that when the bee left the yellow dust in the apple
blossom, the green cup began to grow big and juicy, and to turn into
the apple. And these little crumpled things are all that is left of the
five green leaves into which the upper part of the cup was divided.
These little leaves have been out in all kinds of weather for many
weeks, so no wonder they look rather mussy and forlorn.
It is hard to realize that from the center of this now crumpled bunch
grew the pretty apple blossom.
Now where are those tiny round things that were packed away inside the
green cup?
Well, as that cup is now this apple, the chances are that they are
still hidden safely away within it. So let us take a knife and cut the
apple open.
[Illustration: FIG. 7]
What do you find in its very heart? If you cut it through crosswise,
you find five brown seeds packed as neatly as jewels in their case
(Fig. 7); and if you cut it through lengthwise, you discover only two
or three seeds (Fig. 8).
Probably I need not say to you that these seeds were once the little
round things hidden within the green cup.
[Illustration: FIG. 8]
Some day I will tell you a great deal more about the wonderful golden
dust which turns flowers into apples as easily as Cinderella’s fairy
godmother turned rats into ponies, and pumpkins into coaches.
But all this will come later. Just now I want to talk about something
else.
[Illustration: Grass]
WHAT A PLANT LIVES FOR
When you go for a walk in the country, what do you see all about you?
“Cows and horses, and chickens and birds, and trees and flowers,”
answers some child.
Yes, all of these things you see. But of the trees and plants you see
even more than of the horses and cows and birds. On every side are
plants of one kind or another. The fields are full of grass plants. The
woods are full of tree plants. Along the roadside are plants of many
varieties.
Now, what are all these plants trying to do? “To grow,” comes the
answer. To grow big and strong enough to hold their own in the world.
That is just what they are trying to do.
Then, too, they are trying to flower.
“But they don’t all have flowers,” objects one voice.
You are right. They do not all have flowers; but you would be surprised
to know how many of them do. In fact, all of them except the ferns and
mosses, and a few others, some of which you would hardly recognize as
plants,—all of them, with these exceptions, flower at some time in
their lives.
All the trees have flowers, and all the grasses (Figs. 9, 10); and all
those plants which get so dusty along the roadside, and which you call
“weeds,”—each one of these has its own flower. This may be so small
and dull-looking that you have never noticed it; and unless you look
sharply, perhaps you never will. But all the same, it is a flower.
But there is one especial thing which is really the object of the
plant’s life. Now, who can tell me this: what is this object of a
plant’s life?
Do you know just what I mean by this question? I doubt it; but I will
try to make it clear to you.
[Illustration: FIG. 9]
If I see a boy stop his play, get his hat, and start down the street, I
know that he has what we call “an object in view.” There is some reason
for what he is doing. And if I say to him, “What is the _object_ of
your walk?” I mean, “For what are you going down the street?” And if he
answers, “I am going to get a pound of tea for my mother,” I know that
a pound of tea is the _object_ of his walk.
So when I ask what is the _object_ of a plant’s life, I mean why does a
plant send out roots in search of food, and a stem to carry this food
upward, and leaves to drink in air and sunshine? What is the object of
all this?
A great many people seem to think that the object of all plants with
pretty flowers must be to give pleasure. But these people quite forget
that hundreds and thousands of flowers live and die far away in the
lonely forest, where no human eye ever sees them; that they so lived
and died hundreds and thousands of years before there were any men and
women, and boys and girls, upon the earth. And so, if they stopped long
enough quietly to think about it, they would see for themselves that
plants must have some other object in life than to give people pleasure.
[Illustration: FIG. 10]
But now let us go back to the tree from which we took this apple, and
see if we can find out its special object.
“Why, apples!” some of you exclaim. “Surely the object of an apple tree
is to bear apples.”
That is it exactly. An apple tree lives to bear apples.
And now why is an apple such an important thing? Why is it worth so
much time and trouble? What is its use?
“It is good to eat,” chime all the children in chorus.
Yes, so it is; but then, you must remember that once upon a time, apple
trees, like all other plants and trees, grew in lonely places where
there were no boys and girls to eat their fruit. So we must find some
other answer.
Think for a moment, and then tell me what you find inside every apple.
“Apple seeds,” one of you replies.
And what is the use of these apple seeds?
“Why, they make new apple trees!”
If this be so, if every apple holds some little seeds from which new
apple trees may grow, does it not look as though an apple were useful
and important because it yields seeds?
And what is true of the apple tree is true of other plants and trees.
The plant lives to bear fruit. The fruit is that part of the plant
which holds its seeds; and it is of importance for just this reason,
that it holds the seeds from which come new plants.
THE WORLD WITHOUT PLANTS
We have just learned that the fruit is important because it holds the
plant’s seeds; and we know that seeds are important because from them
come the new plants for another year. Let us stop here one moment, and
try to think what would happen if plants should stop having seeds, if
there should be no new plants.
We all, and especially those of us who are children, carry about with
us a little picture gallery of our very own. In this gallery are
pictures of things which our real eyes have never seen, yet which
we ourselves see quite as plainly as the objects which our eyes rest
upon in the outside world. Some of these pictures are very beautiful.
They show us things so wonderful and delightful and interesting, that
at times we forget all about the real, outside things. Indeed, these
pictures often seem to us more real than anything else in the world.
And once in a great while we admire them so earnestly that we are able
to make them come true; that is, _we turn our backs upon them_, and
work so hard to bring them about, that at last what was only a picture
becomes a reality.
Perhaps some of you children can step into this little gallery of your
own, and see a picture of the great world as it would be if there
should be no new plants.
This picture would show the world some hundreds of years from now; for,
although some plants live only a short time, others (and usually these
are trees) live hundreds of years.
But in the picture even the last tree has died away. Upon the earth
there is not one green, growing thing. The sun beats down upon the
bare, brown deserts. It seems to scorch and blister the rocky mountain
sides. There are no cool shadows where one can lie on a summer
afternoon; no dark, ferny nooks, such as children love, down by the
stream. But, after all, that does not matter much, for there are no
children to search out such hidden, secret spots.
“No children! Why, what has happened to them?”
Well, if _plants_ should stop having children (for the little young
plants that come up each year are just the children of the big,
grown-up plants), all other life—the life of all grown people, and of
all children, and of all animals—would also come to an end.
Did you ever stop to think of this,—that your very life depended upon
these plants and trees? You know that they are pretty to look at, and
pleasant to play about; but I doubt if you ever realized before, that
to them you owe your life.
Now let us see how this can be. What did you have this morning for
breakfast?
Bread and milk? Well, of what is the bread made? Flour? Yes, and the
flour is made from the seeds of the wheat. If the wheat stopped having
seeds, you would stop having bread made from wheat seeds. That is plain
enough.
Then the milk,—where does that come from?
“That comes from the cows, and cows are not plants,” you say.
True, cows are not plants, but what would happen to the cows if there
were no plants? Do not cows live in the green meadows, where all day
long they munch the grass plants? And would there be any green meadows
and all-day banquets, in years to come, if the grass did not first
flower, and then seed? So then, no grass, no cows, and you would be
without milk as well as without bread for breakfast.
And so it is with all the rest of our food. We live on either plants
or animals. If there were no plants, there would be no animals, for
animals cannot live without plants.
It is something like the house that Jack built, isn’t it?
“We are the children that drink the milk, that comes from the cows,
that eat the grass, that grows from the seeds in the meadow.”
“If there were no seeds, there would be no grass to feed the cows that
give us our milk for breakfast.”
And so it is everywhere. Plants give us a kind of food that we must
have, and that only they can give. They could get on well enough
without animals. Indeed, for a long time they did so, many hundreds of
years ago. But animals cannot live without plants.
I think you will now remember why seeds are of such great importance.
HOW THE APPLE SHIELDS ITS YOUNG
Some time ago you noticed that apple seeds were packed away within the
apple as neatly as though they were precious jewels in their case.
When we see something done up very carefully, surrounded with cotton
wool, laid in a beautiful box, and wrapped about with soft paper,
we feel sure that the object of all this care is of value. Even the
outside of such a package tells us that something precious lies within.
[Illustration: FIG. 11]
But what precious jewels could be laid away more carefully than these
apple seeds? And what jewel case could boast a more beautiful outside
than this red-cheeked apple (Fig. 11)?
Pass it around. Note its lovely color, its delicate markings, its
satin-like skin. For myself, I feel sure that I never have seen a jewel
case one half so beautiful.
Then cut it open and see how carefully the soft yet firm apple flesh is
packed about the little seeds, keeping them safe from harm (Fig. 12).
[Illustration: FIG. 12]
But perhaps you think that anything so good to eat is not of much use
as a protection. It takes you boys and girls about half a minute to
swallow such a jewel case as this.
But here comes the interesting part of the story.
When you learn how well able this apple is to defend from harm its
precious seeds, I think you will look upon it with new respect, and
will own that it is not only a beautiful jewel case, but a safe one.
All seeds need care and wrapping-up till they are ripe; for if they
fall to the ground before they are well grown, they will not be able to
start new plants.
You know that you can tell whether an apple is ripe by looking at its
seeds, for the fruit and its seeds ripen together. When the apple seeds
are dark brown, then the apple is ready to be eaten.
But if, in order to find out whether an apple was ripe, you were
obliged always to examine its seeds, you might destroy many apples and
waste many young seeds before you found what you wished; so, in order
to protect its young, the apple must tell you when it is ready to be
eaten in some other way than by its seeds.
How does it do this? Why, it puts off its green coat, and instead
wears one of red or yellow; and from being hard to the touch, it
becomes soft and yielding when you press it with your fingers. If not
picked, then it falls upon the ground in order to show you that it is
waiting for you; and when you bite into it, you find it juicy, and
pleasant to the taste.
While eating such an apple as this, you can be sure that when you come
to the inner part, which holds its seeds, you will find these brown,
and ripe, and quite ready to be set free from the case which has held
them so carefully all summer.
But how does the apple still further protect its young till they are
ready to go out into the world?
Well, stop and think what happened one day last summer when you stole
into the orchard and ate a quantity of green apples, the little seeds
of which were far too white and young to be sent off by themselves.
In the first place, as soon as you began to climb the tree, had you
chosen to stop and listen, you could almost have heard the green skins
of those apples calling out to you, “Don’t eat us, we’re not ripe yet!”
And when you felt them with your fingers, they were hard to the touch;
and this hardness said to you, “Don’t eat us, we’re not ripe yet!”
But all the same, you ate them; and the sour taste which puckered up
your mouth said to you, “Stop eating us, we’re not ripe yet!”
But you did not pay any attention to their warnings; and, though they
spared no pains, those apples were not able to save their baby seeds
from being wasted by your greediness.
But there was still one thing they could do to prevent your eating many
more green apples, and wasting more half-ripe seeds. They could punish
you so severely for having disobeyed their warnings, that you would not
be likely very soon to do the same thing again.
And this is just what they did.
When feeling so ill and unhappy that summer night from all the unripe
fruit you had been eating, perhaps you hardly realized that those
apples were crying out to you,—
“You would not listen to us, and so we are punishing you by making you
ill and uncomfortable. When you saw how green we were, we were begging
you not to eat us till our young seeds were ripe. When you felt how
hard we were, we were trying to make you understand that we were not
ready for you yet. And, now that you _have_ eaten us in spite of all
that we did to save ourselves and our seeds, we are going to make you
just as unhappy as we know how. Perhaps next time you will pay some
heed to our warnings, and will leave us alone till we are ready to let
our young ones go out into the world.”
So after this when I show you an apple, and ask you what you know about
it, I fancy you will have quite a story to tell,—a story that begins
with one May day in the orchard, when a bee went flower visiting, and
ends with the little brown seeds which you let fall upon the ground,
when you had finished eating the rosy cheeks and juicy pulp of the
apple seed case. And the apple’s story is also the story of many other
fruits.
[Illustration: Flower]
SOME COUSINS OF THE APPLE
The pear (Fig. 13) is a near cousin of the apple.
But perhaps you did not know that plants and trees had cousins.
As you learn more and more about them, you will begin to feel that in
many ways plants are very much like people.
Both the pear and the apple belong to the Rose family. They are cousins
to all the garden roses, as well as to the lovely wild rose that you
meet so often in summer along the roadside.
[Illustration: FIG. 13]
We know some families where the girls and boys look so much alike that
we could guess they were brothers and sisters, even if we did not know
that they all lived in the one house and had the one family name. If we
look carefully at the plants we meet, at their leaves and flowers and
fruits, and even at their stems and roots, often we may guess rightly
which ones belong to the same family.
If we place side by side an apple blossom and a pear blossom, we see
that they are very like each other. Both have the green outside cup
which above is cut into five little green leaves. Both have five white
or pinkish flower leaves. Both have a good many pins with dust boxes,
and from two to five of those pins without dust boxes.
If we place side by side a pear and an apple, we see in both cases that
it is the green cup, grown big and juicy and ripe, which forms the
delicious fruit.
If we cut these two fruits open lengthwise, we can see just how the
pins without dust boxes are set into the green cup; and we can see that
the lower, united part of these pins makes a little box which holds the
seeds.
In the picture (Fig. 14) the shading shows you where this seedbox ends,
and the green cup, or what once was the green cup, begins. This is
rather hard to understand, I know; but your teacher can make it clear
to you with a real pear.
So it ought to surprise you no longer to learn that the apple and the
pear are cousins.
[Illustration: FIG. 14]
Now, I want you to look at the picture at the head of this chapter.
This is the wild rose, the flower from which the great Rose family
takes its name.
This rose is a much larger flower than either the apple or the pear
blossom. Its flower leaves are deep pink. These bright flower leaves
make gay handkerchiefs for signaling when the rose plant wishes to
attract the attention of the bees.
But there are five of them, just as there are in the apple and the pear
blossom; and there are the pins with dust boxes,—so many of them, in
the rose, that it would take some time to count them all. And in the
center are the pins which have seedboxes below; for these pins in the
rose are quite separate one from another, and each one has its own
little seedbox.
So, though different in some ways, in others the flower of the rose is
very much like those of the apple and the pear.
[Illustration: FIG. 15]
In this picture (Fig. 15) you see its fruit. This is called the “rose
hip.” When ripe, it turns bright red. In late summer you see the
rosebushes covered with these pretty hips. At times this fruit does
not look altogether unlike a tiny apple or pear; but if we cut it open
lengthwise, we see that its inside arrangements are quite different.
The lower parts of the pins without dust boxes do not grow into one
piece with the green cup (now the red cup), as in the apple and the
pear. Instead, this cup (Fig. 16) is hollow. To its inner sides are
fastened the little seedboxes, as you will see if you look carefully
at the picture. This hollow case with its separate seedboxes shows you
that the rose plant is not so closely related to the pear and the apple
trees as these trees are to each other.
[Illustration: FIG. 16]
UNEATABLE FRUITS
Perhaps one day you bit into the fruit of the rose, and found it sour
and unpleasant to the taste. You may have forgotten that not long ago
you learned a new meaning for the word “fruit.” Possibly you still
fancy that a fruit must be something good to eat. So many people have
this idea, that once more I wish to make clear to you that _the fruit
is the seed-holding part of the plant_.
[Illustration: Leaves]
Whether this part is good to eat or not, makes no difference as to its
being a fruit.
The apple is a fruit, you remember, not because it is good to eat, but
because it holds the seeds of the apple tree.
And for this same reason the pear is a fruit. It is the case in which
is laid the seedbox of the pear tree. This case, when ripe, happens to
be juicy and delicious; but it would be quite as much a fruit if it
were dry and hard, and without taste.
And so the rose hip is a fruit, because it is the case which holds the
little seedboxes of the rose flower.
What is the fruit of the milkweed?
All country children know the milkweed plant, with its big bright
leaves, and bunches of pink or red or purple flowers (Fig. 17). And
you know the puffy pods that later split open, letting out a mass of
brown, silky-tailed seeds. There! I have given the answer to my own
question; for if the plant’s fruit is the seed-holding part, then the
milkweed’s fruit must be this pod stuffed full of beautiful, fairy-like
seeds.
[Illustration: FIG. 17]
Then you know the burdock (Fig. 18) which grows along the country road.
But perhaps you do not know that the fruit of this is the prickly burr
which hooks itself to your clothes on your way to school. This burr
(Fig. 19) is the case which holds the little seeds of the burdock, and
so it must be its fruit.
[Illustration: FIG. 18]
[Illustration: FIG. 19]
[Illustration: FIG. 20]
The fruit of the dandelion is the silvery puffball (Fig. 20) or
“clock,” by blowing at which you try to tell the time of day. If you
pull off one of the feathery objects which go to make up the puffball,
at its lower end you see a little dandelion seedbox (Fig. 21).
And these fall days, along the roadsides and in the woods, everywhere
you see fruits which you will hardly know as such unless you keep in
mind the true meaning of the word.
Many of these I am sure you would not care to eat. The burr from the
burdock would not make a pleasant mouthful. Neither would you like to
breakfast on a milkweed pod. And a quantity of dandelion puffballs
would hardly add to the enjoyment of your supper.
[Illustration: FIG. 21]
If you should tell your mother you had brought her some fruit, and
should show her a basket of burrs and pods, she would think you were
only joking, and perhaps a little foolish; and I dare say she would be
greatly surprised to find you were using the word quite rightly.
MORE COUSINS OF THE APPLE
[Illustration: FIG. 22]
The apple has three cousins, all of whom are very much alike. These
cousins are the cherry, the plum, and the peach (Figs. 22, 23, 24). All
three belong to the Rose family.
Have you ever noticed the great family likeness between these three
fruits?
Look at them in the pictures. To be sure, they are of different sizes,
but they are almost alike in shape.
And if you should cut them open lengthwise, right through the stony
center, all three would look much like the next picture, which is taken
from a peach (Fig. 25). All these fruits have the soft outer part which
you find so pleasant to the taste.
[Illustration: FIG. 23]
[Illustration: FIG. 24]
Within this, in all of them, is a hard object, which we call the stone
or pit; and inside this stone or pit, in each case, lies the seed.
These next pictures show you two views of the flower of the cherry
(Figs. 26, 27).
Here you see a likeness to other members of the Rose family, to the
blossoms of the apple and the pear.
[Illustration: FIG. 25]
You see that the green cup is cut into five little leaves (in the
picture these are turned back and downward). You see also the five
white flower leaves, and ever so many of the pins with dust boxes. But
you find only one of those pins without dust boxes; and this, as you
now know, has a seedbox below.
[Illustration: FIG. 26]
[Illustration: FIG. 27]
Well, that is all right. The cherry blossom has but one of these pins,
and the flowers of the peach and of the plum have only one.
Figure 28 shows you a cherry blossom cut open. Here you see plainly the
single pin with a seedbox.
This seedbox with its case is what grows into the cherry. The white
flower leaves, and the pins with dust boxes, fall away. In the cherry
flower the green cup also disappears, instead of making the best part
of the fruit, as it does with the apple and the pear. And the upper
part of the seedbox pin withers off; but the seedbox below grows juicy
and ripe and red, at least its outer case does.
[Illustration: FIG. 28]
By the end of June you take out the long ladder and place it against
the cherry tree. Seating yourself on one of its upper rungs, you
swallow the outside of the shining little ball we call the cherry,
letting the stony seedbox inside drop down upon the ground, where all
ripe seeds belong.
The story of the plum and of the peach is almost the same as the story
of the cherry. If you understand how the single seedbox of the cherry
blossom turns into the cherry fruit, then you understand how the same
thing happens with the single seedboxes of the plum and the peach
blossom.
You know that in the flowers of the pear and the apple there were
several of these pins without dust boxes; and although these were
joined below into a single seedbox, this had separate compartments for
the many seeds.
But the single seedboxes of the cherry, the plum, and the peach, have
but one hollow. Usually in this hollow we find only one seed. So you
see that these three fruits make a little group by themselves because
of their great likeness to one another.
STILL MORE COUSINS
Cherries and plums we find growing wild in the woods and fields. While
in many ways the wild trees are unlike those we grow in our orchards,
yet, if you look closely at their flowers and fruits, you will find
they answer generally to the descriptions you have been reading.
[Illustration: FIG. 29]
Early in May, when the orchard is still gray and dreary, suddenly we
notice that the upper branches of the cherry tree look as though a
light snow had fallen. It seems as if the lovely blossoms had burst
forth in an hour. One’s heart gives a joyful jump. Summer is really
coming. The flowers of May promise the fruit of June.
But when we find the blossoms of the wild cherry, it is several weeks
later. Some of the little wood flowers have already come and gone. The
trees are thick with leaves before we discover the fragrance of its
slender, drooping clusters; for, though in other ways these blossoms
are almost exactly like those of the cultivated cherry, they are much
smaller, and grow differently on the branches.
This same difference in size and manner of growing you will find
between the wild and the cultivated fruits. You country children
know well the little chokecherries (Fig. 29) that are so pretty and
so plentiful along the lanes. These hang in bunches that remind you
somewhat of the clusters of the currant. They are much smaller than the
market cherry; yet if you cut one through, you will see that in make-up
it is almost exactly like its big sister.
Those of you who live near the sea find wild beach plums (Fig. 30)
growing thickly along the sand hills. These are hardly larger than
good-sized grapes; yet if you cut them open, you see that they are
really plums.
In our woods and fields we do not find any wild peaches. The peach was
brought to us from far-away Persia. Only in the garden and orchard do
we meet its beautiful pink blossoms. To see these growing naturally we
must go to their Persian home.
[Illustration: FIG. 30]
So, while we remember that the cherry, the plum, and the peach belong
to one little group because of their likeness to one another, let us
not forget that the peach is one of the foreign members of the Rose
family.
IN THE WOODS
What do you say this morning to going to the woods rather than to
either garden or orchard?
Not that I am ready to take back anything I said at the beginning of
this book about the delights of the orchard as a playground. For actual
play I know of no better place. An apple tree is as good a horse as
it is a house, as good a ship as it is a mountain. Other trees may be
taller, finer to look at, more exciting to climb; but they do not know
how to fit themselves to the need of the moment as does an apple tree.
But for anything besides play, the woods, the real woods, are even
better than the orchard. The truth is, in the woods you have such a
good time just living, that you hardly need to play; at least you do if
you are made in the right way.
So now we are off for the woods. We have only to cross a field and
climb a fence, and we are in the lane which leads where we wish to go.
Through the trees comes a golden light. This is made partly by the
sunshine, but mostly by the leaves turned yellow. These yellow leaves
mean that summer is over. It is in summer, when we are having our
vacation, that the leaves work hardest; for leaves have work to do, as
we shall learn later. But now they are taking a rest, and wearing their
holiday colors.
Twisting in and out over the rails of the fence are clusters of
berries which are very beautiful when you look at them closely. Each
berry is an orange-colored case which opens so as to show a scarlet
seedbox within (Fig. 31). A little earlier in the year you could not
see this bright-colored seedbox. It is only a short time since the
outer case opened and displayed its contents. These are the berries of
the bittersweet. Last June you would hardly have noticed its little
greenish flowers, and would have been surprised to learn that they
could change into such gay fruit.
[Illustration: FIG. 31]
Do you see a shrub close by covered with berries? These berries are
dark blue. They grow on bright-red stalks. If we wait here long enough,
it is likely that we shall see the birds alight upon some upper twig
and make their dinner on the dogwood berries; for this is one of the
Dogwood family,—the red-stalked dogwood, we call it (Fig. 32). When its
berries turn a very dark blue, then the birds know they are ready to be
eaten, just as we know the same thing by the rosy cheeks of the apple.
[Illustration: FIG. 32]
You can be pretty sure that any fruit so gayly colored as to make us
look at it twice, is trying to persuade some one—some boy or girl, or
bird, or perhaps even some bear—to come and eat it.
You have not forgotten, I hope, why these fruits are so anxious to be
eaten? You remember that when their seeds become ripe, and ready to
make new plants, then they put on bright colors that say for them,
“Come and eat us, for our little seeds want to get out of their prison!”
Once upon a time these seeds did not find their cozy seed cases a
prison. So once upon a time the baby robins were content to stay safe
in their nest. And once upon a time all the playground you needed was
a little corner behind your mother’s chair. But seeds, like birds and
babies, outgrow their surroundings, and need more room.
[Illustration: FIG. 33]
Here is a tall shrub with bright-colored leaves, and clusters of dark
red fruit that grow high above our heads (Fig. 33). It looks something
like certain materials used in fancywork. This shrub is called the
sumac; and if you pick and pull apart one of its fruit clusters, you
find that it is made up of a quantity of seeds that are covered with
little red hairs. There is nothing soft and juicy about the fruit of
the sumac. Whether it is ever used as food by the birds, I do not know.
I wish some child would make it his business to find out about this.
Some of you are sure to live near a clump of sumacs. By watching them
closely for a few weeks, you ought to discover if any birds feed upon
their fruit.
If you do make any such discovery, I hope you will write a letter
telling me of it; and then, if another edition of this book is
published, I shall be able to tell other children more about the fruit
of the sumac than I can tell you to-day.
There are many interesting things about plants yet to be found out; and
you children will find it far pleasanter to make your own discoveries,
using your own bright eyes, than to read about the discoveries of
other people. Every field, each bit of woods, the road we know so well
leading from home to the schoolhouse, and even the city squares and
parks, are full of interesting things that as yet we have never seen,
even though we may have been over the ground a hundred times before.
Now let us leave the lane, and strike into the woods in search of new
fruits. This morning we will look especially for those fruits which
by their bright colors and pleasant looks seem to be calling out to
whomsoever it may concern, “Come and eat us!”
Close at hand is one of our prettiest plants. Its leaves look as though
they were trying to be in the height of the fall fashion, and to outdo
even the trees in brightness of color. These leaves are set in circles
about the slim stem. From the top of this grow some purple berries
(Fig. 34).
[Illustration: FIG. 34]
This plant is the Indian cucumber root. If one of you boys will dig
it up with your knife, you will find that its root is shaped a little
like a cucumber. Though I have never made the experiment myself, I
am told that it tastes something like the cucumber. It is possible,
that, as its name suggests, it was used as food by the Indians. To hunt
up the beginnings of plant names is often amusing. So many of these
are Indian, that in our rambles through the woods we are constantly
reminded of the days when the red man was finding his chief support in
their plants and animals.
In June we find the flower of the Indian cucumber root. This is a
little yellowish blossom, one of the Lily family. Small though it is,
for one who knows something of botany it is easy to recognize it as
a lily. Indeed, the look of the plant suggests the wood and meadow
lilies. This is partly because of the way in which the leaves grow
about its stem, much as they do in these other lilies.
Now look at the beautiful carpet which is spread beneath your feet.
Here you will wish to step very lightly; for otherwise you might crush
some of those bright red berries which are set thickly among the little
white-veined leaves.
These are called “partridge berries,”—a name given them because they
are eaten by partridges. But the bare winter woods offer few tempting
morsels for bird meals; and it seems likely that the nuthatch and
snowbird, the chickadee and winter wren, hail with delight these bright
berries, and share with the partridges the welcome feast.
Please look closely at one of the berries in Fig. 35, and tell me
whether you see anything unusual.
“There are two little holes on top.”
Yes, that is just what I hoped you would notice. I do not know of any
other berries in which you could find these two little holes; and as I
do not believe it would be possible for you to guess what made these
holes, I will tell you about them.
[Illustration: FIG. 35]
The flowers of the partridge vine always grow in twos. The seedboxes
of these two flowers are joined in one. So when the flowers fade
away, only the one seedbox is left. When this ripens, it becomes the
partridge berry; and the two little holes show where the two flowers
were fastened to the seedbox.
Try not to forget this, and early next July be sure to go to the
woods and look for the little sister flowers. Perhaps their delicious
fragrance will help you in your hunt for their hiding place. Then see
for yourselves how the two blossoms have but one seedbox between them
(Fig. 35).
Now, we must take care not to wet our feet, for the ground is getting
damp. We are coming to that lovely spot where the brook winds beneath
the hemlocks after making its leap down the rocks. What is that flaming
red spot against the gray rock yonder?
As we draw nearer, we see that a quantity of scarlet berries are
closely packed upon a thick stalk (Fig. 36).
Do you know the name of the plant which owns this flaming fruit?
If you were in these woods last May, at every turn you met one of those
quaint little fellows we call “Jack-in-the-pulpit.”
[Illustration: FIG. 36]
Jack himself, you remember, was hidden almost out of sight by his
“pulpit.” This pulpit was made of a leaf striped green or purple, or
both; and this leaf curled about and above Jack (Fig. 37).
After a time the pretty leaf pulpit faded away, and Jack was left
standing all alone.
The lower part of Jack is covered with tiny flowers. After these had
been properly dusted by the little flies (for flies, not bees, visit
Jack), just as the apple blossom began to change into the apple, so
these tiny flowers began to turn into bright berries.
While this was happening, Jack’s upper part began to wither away; and
at last all of it that was left was the queer little tail which you see
at the top of the bunch of berries.
[Illustration: FIG. 37]
It is said that the Indians boiled these berries, and then thought them
very good to eat.
If we were lost in the woods, and obliged to live upon the plants about
us, I dare say we should eat, and perhaps enjoy eating, many things
which now seem quite impossible; but until this happens I advise you
not to experiment with strange leaves and roots and berries. Every
little while one reads of the death of some child as the result of
eating a poisonous plant.
[Illustration: FIG. 38]
The next picture (Fig. 38) shows you the fruit of Solomon’s seal. These
dark-blue berries hang from beneath the leafy stem, just as the little
flowers hung their yellow heads last May.
Next come the speckled red berries of the false Solomon’s seal (Fig.
39), a big cousin of the smaller plant. As you see, this bears its
fruit quite differently, all in a cluster at the upper part of the
stem. These two plants seem to be great chums, constantly growing side
by side.
We have been so busy and so happy that the morning has flown, and now
we must be finding our way home to dinner; for, unlike the birds, we
are not satisfied to dine on berries alone.
[Illustration: FIG. 39]
At almost every step we long to stop and look at some new plant in
fruit; for, now that we have learned how to look for them, berries of
different sorts seem thick on every side.
Low at our feet are the red ones of the wintergreen (Fig. 40).
On taller plants grow the odd white ones, with blackish spots, of the
white baneberry (Fig. 41), or the red ones of the red baneberry.
[Illustration: FIG. 40]
[Illustration: FIG. 41]
Still higher glisten the dark, glass-like clusters of the spikenard.
Along the lane are glowing barberries (Fig. 42) and thorns bright with
their “haws” (for the fruit of the thorn is called a “haw”). These look
something like little apples.
Here, too, is the black alder, studded with its red, waxy beads. But we
must hurry on, not stopping by the way. And you can be sure that those
birds we hear chirruping above us are glad enough to be left to finish
their dinner in peace.
[Illustration: FIG. 42]
[Illustration: Berries]
WHY SEEDS TRAVEL
At last I think we all understand that by the red of the apple, the
purple of the plum, and the different colors worn by the berries we
find in the woods, these plants are inviting us, and the birds also, to
eat their fruit, and so release from prison their little seeds.
But what would happen, do you suppose, if no one should accept this
invitation? What would become of their seeds if these pears and apples
and berries were not eaten by boys and girls and birds?
Most of this question you can answer for yourselves.
If you leave the apple on the tree, after a time it falls off upon the
ground; and unless picked up, there it lies till it decays. In the
orchard every fall you see apples decaying on the ground. In a little
while the fleshy part disappears, and the little seeds are thus let out
of prison without help.
But many plants are not satisfied to leave their seeds so near home.
Why is this, do you suppose?
Well, this is quite a long story.
All plants of the same kind need just the same sort of food. If too
many apple trees grow together, they soon use up all the apple-tree
food in the neighborhood.
So if a seed is to grow into a strong, hearty, well-fed plant, it ought
to begin life in some place not already full of plants in search of
just the food that it needs for itself.
If a plant or tree makes its fruit so good to eat that some boy or girl
or bird is likely to pick it, the chances are that it will be carried
at least a short distance before its seeds are dropped upon the ground.
Once in a while a plant is rewarded for its pains by having its young
carried thousands of miles.
Think how far from its home the peach has traveled. As I told you
before, it comes to us from Persia.
Now, if the Persian peach tree had not made its fruit very juicy and
delicious, it is not likely that any one would have taken the trouble
to bring its seeds way over here to us.
But this peach being what it is, one of the most delicious of fruits,
the tree was rewarded for its pains by having its children taken where
they were petted, and made much of, and had things all their own way;
for no other peach trees were on hand to do their best to crowd them
out.
Then think of the little partridge berry. The fleshy part of this the
birds eat and digest. But the little seeds pass unharmed from the
bird’s stomach to the earth, sometimes many miles from the woods where
they were born.
What is true of the peach and of the partridge berry is true of many
other fruits.
Without the help of man or bird or beast, these little seeds could at
last get out of their seed cases; but without such help, often they
could not get the start in life they need.
So it would seem as if a fruit’s bright color and delicious flavor were
saying to us not only, “Come and eat us and set our seeds free,” but
also, “and carry us far away, so that we may have a fair chance in the
world.”
SOME LITTLE TRAMPS
[Illustration: FIG. 43]
When I came home from that walk in the woods the other day, it took me
some time to rid my clothes of many odd-looking little things, such as
you see in the picture above (Fig. 43).
This round burr (Fig. 44) was one of the worst of my hangers-on. You
know it quite well. It is the fruit of the burdock. Can some child tell
me why I call this prickly burr a fruit?
Now let us look carefully at this seed case or fruit of the burdock.
[Illustration: FIG. 44]
Instead of being smooth to the touch, like some other fruits we know,
such as the apple and the pear, it is covered with stiff hooks. By
these hooks it fastened itself so firmly to my clothes, that it was
difficult to pull it off without making a tear.
Why does the burdock put its seeds into such a prickly case?
Please stop reading for a moment and try to answer this question.
Cudgel well your brains for the use of such a prickly seed case as that
of the burdock plant.
Now I am hoping that one of you children will be able to think out some
such answer as this:—
“Of course, the burdock plant doesn’t want its seeds to fall on the
piece of ground that has been used up already by other burdocks, any
more than the partridge vine wishes to drop its seeds in the same
little hollow where other partridge vines have eaten all the good food.
As this burdock plant cannot make its seed case so bright and pretty,
and good to eat, that the birds will carry it off, it must manage in
some other way to send its seeds on their travels. And this is what it
does: it covers the seed case with little hooks. When the seeds inside
are quite ripe, this case breaks off very easily. So when the children
come hunting berries, it hooks itself to their clothes, or else it
catches in the hair of their dogs, or takes hold of the wool of grazing
sheep, and gets carried quite a way before it is picked or rubbed off.
When that happens, it is far enough from its old home to set up for
itself.”
I should indeed be pleased if one of you children could give me some
such answer as that.
So you see this prickly seed case does just as much for its little
charges as the juicy apple and velvety peach do for theirs.
And the same thing is true of all those other hooked, or barbed, or
prickly little objects that I picked off my clothes the other day, and
that cling to you when you take a walk in the fall woods.
They are all fruits. They are the ripe seed cases of the different
plants.
But they are dull-looking, and often quite vexing, instead of being
pleasant to the sight and taste and touch.
This makes no difference, however, in their having things pretty much
their own way. We do not in the least want to carry abroad these little
torments, scattering far and wide their seeds, so that another year
there will be more burrs and barbs and bristles than ever, to tear our
clothes and worry our dogs; but they force us to do them this service,
whether we will or no, and never stop to say “By your leave.”
At every turn they are waiting for us. Where we climb the fence, and
cross the fields, and break through the woods, we can almost fancy that
we hear them whispering together, “Here they come! Now is our chance!”
They remind us of those lazy tramps that lie along the railway, getting
on the trucks of passing trains, and stealing rides across the country.
These ugly hooked fruits have one great advantage over the pretty ones
that are good to eat. They do not have to wait our pleasure. But when
we are most busy and hurried, without a moment to loiter in the apple
orchard or among the berry bushes, then, quite as well as, if not
better than, during our leisure moments, they lay hold upon us with
their tiny claws, and cling closely till we set to work to get rid of
them. When we pick them off and fling them to the ground, we are doing
just what they most wish.
[Illustration: FIG. 45]
In this picture (Fig. 45) you see the seed case of the tick trefoil.
This plant belongs to the Pea family; and its fruit is really a pod,
something like that of the garden pea. But when this pod of the tick
trefoil is ripe, it splits into five little pieces. Each piece is a
separate seed case. This is covered with hooked hairs, by means of
which it fastens itself to our clothing and to the hair of animals,
just as the burr of the burdock did. These little seed cases go by the
name of “ticks.”
[Illustration: FIG. 46]
Here is the fruit of the stick-tight (Fig. 46). You see its two teeth
that are so well fitted to weave themselves into either cloth or hair.
Fig. 47 shows you a strange and terrible fruit of this same class. It
grows on an African plant, and may fasten itself so firmly into the
hair of animals, that the attempt to get it out is almost hopeless.
Sometimes an unfortunate lion will kill himself in his efforts to
wrench this tormenting seed case from his skin. In his struggles he
gets it into his mouth, and so dies.
[Illustration: FIG. 47]
I am glad to say we have nothing so terrifying as this among our hooked
fruits.
Even if at times you are tempted to lose your patience with such
impertinent little tramps as they are, I think you can hardly help
admiring the clever way in which they manage to get a free ride.
SEED SAILBOATS
On your way to school these fall days, often you notice certain white,
silky things floating lazily through the air. Sometimes you catch one
of these little objects, and blow it away again with a message to a
friend. Or perhaps you wish upon it. At least, this is what I did as
a child. Life in those days was full of these mysterious “wishes.” A
white horse, a hay cart, the first star, a wandering thistle down,—each
promised the possible granting of one’s most secret wish.
[Illustration: Seeds]
That the thistle down comes from the thistle plant, you know. But not
all the silky things that look like fairy sailboats are thistle down,
for many plants beside the thistle let loose these tiny air ships.
Have you ever wondered where they come from, what they are doing? Or do
they seem to you so lazy, so drifting, so aimless, that you doubt if
they are going anywhere in particular, or have really anything to do?
But by this time you have learned that plants have better reasons for
their actions than you had dreamed before you began to pay them some
attention. You have discovered that they dress their flowers in gay
colors so that the bees may be tempted to visit them and powder them
with golden dust. You have learned that they make their fruits juicy
and delicious so that boys and girls and birds may be persuaded to
carry off their seeds; and the better you know them, the more certain
you feel that they manage their affairs with much common sense, that
they are not likely to take time and trouble for nothing.
[Illustration: FIG. 48]
So let us look closely at some of these air ships, and try to guess
their errand.
I hope that some time ago you were told to get together as many
different kinds as you could find, and to bring them here this morning.
In this picture you see some of the air ships of the milkweed (Fig. 49).
The lower part of Fig. 48 is a seedbox of the milkweed. To this are
fastened the silky threads which make the sail that carries the seed
through the air with the least wind, just as the canvas sail carries
the boat across the water.
Can you think of some other plants that send abroad seed sailboats?
[Illustration: FIG. 49]
Perhaps some of you remember the beautiful pink or purple flowers which
grew last summer in tall spikes along the road and up the mountain
side. These were borne upon a plant called sometimes fireweed and again
willow herb (Fig. 50). The first name was given to it because it grows
freely in places that have been laid waste by fire. The latter one it
owes to its leaves, which look somewhat like those of the willow.
[Illustration: FIG. 50]
By the end of August most of these beautiful blossoms had disappeared,
leaving in their place the fruit. This fruit of the fireweed or willow
herb is a long pod such as you see in the picture (Fig. 51). This pod
is packed full of seeds, to each one of which is fastened a silky sail.
Finally all these pods split open, letting out their little air ships
(Fig. 52), and giving a beautiful, feathery look to the great patches
in which they are found.
[Illustration: FIG. 51]
[Illustration: FIG. 52]
[Illustration: FIG. 53]
[Illustration: FIG. 54]
Another plant which launches air ships is the clematis. In August its
pretty white blossoms clamber over the stone wall, and twist about
the bushes and trees, making the lanes very lovely. In the fall this
climber is almost as pretty as in summer, for its fruit clusters (Fig.
53) are made of such long-tailed seeds as you see in Fig. 54. When
these open, and float away with the first light wind, you can see how
well their little sails are fitted to catch the breeze.
[Illustration: FIG. 55]
[Illustration: FIG. 56]
In October and November nearly every roadside is lined with clusters
such as you see in the next picture, except that the picture cannot
give their soft, velvety look. These are the fruit clusters of the
golden-rod (Fig. 55), made up of quantities of silky-tailed seeds such
as you see above (Fig. 56).
And this is the fruit cluster of the aster (Fig. 57). Each little
puffball is composed of many aster seeds (Fig. 58).
[Illustration: FIG. 57]
[Illustration: FIG. 58]
The pasture thistle is almost as beautiful in fruit as in flower. It
swells up into a great silvery cushion, which finally vanishes in a
cloud of floating thistle down.
And here is the fruit cluster of the dandelion (Fig. 59), and also a
single seed sailboat (Fig. 60).
Hundreds of other plants attach these little sails to their seeds. You
can hardly walk a step in the fall along the country roads without
meeting these masses of feathery fruit made up of just such seeds. So
now we come back to our questions, “Where are they going? What are they
doing?”
[Illustration: FIG. 59]
[Illustration: FIG. 60]
And as you have learned why the apple tree and the partridge vine pack
their seeds in pretty cases, and why the burdock and the stick-tight
cover theirs with hooks and bristles, you ought to answer these
questions very easily. You found that those plants wished to send their
little seeds abroad, so that they might get a better foothold in some
piece of earth that was not used already by plants hungry for the very
food that they most needed.
This is just what the thistle and milkweed and dandelion and aster want
for their seeds; and this is why they fasten them to little sails, and
send them far away on a voyage of discovery.
WINGED SEEDS
Many of the trees also send their seeds on air voyages, in the hope of
finding some piece of land that will give them a chance to grow into
new, strong trees.
[Illustration: FIG. 61]
The seeds of the willow (Fig. 62) have silky white sails such as we
have found already in the plants of the milkweed and willow herb; and
the cottonwood tree is so called because its tufted seeds remind one of
the famous cotton seeds from which we get our cotton thread (Fig. 63).
[Illustration: FIG. 62]
There are other trees which use wings instead of sails when they send
their seeds flying through the air.
[Illustration: FIG. 63]
Here you have the winged fruits of the maple (Fig. 64). In summer you
see these winged fruits hanging in clusters from the trees; and later
in the year they are thickly scattered along the village street and in
the city squares.
[Illustration: FIG. 64]
You can understand how easily the maple seeds inside these cases would
be carried upon the breeze by their wings.
Each seed of the elm tree is winged nearly all the way round. The
picture (Fig. 65) shows you a cluster of these as they look upon the
tree.
[Illustration: FIG. 65]
[Illustration: FIG. 66]
Here is a bunch of the long-winged seeds of the ash (Fig. 66). Next
comes a fruit cluster from the hop hornbeam (Fig. 67), and above is a
single fruit (Fig. 68).
[Illustration: FIG. 67]
The seeds of the pine tree are hidden away in the pine cone (Fig. 69)
you know so well, and those of the hemlock in the hemlock cone (Fig.
61). When they are quite ripe, they break away from these cones. In so
doing, each one carries with it a little piece of the cone, which acts
as a wing to the seed (Fig. 70).
[Illustration: FIG. 68]
[Illustration: FIG. 69]
[Illustration: FIG. 70]
Nearly all of these seeds you can find for yourselves when you wander
about the country. Indeed, if you have eyes that are good for anything,
many of them you cannot help seeing. It is all very well to read about
these plants and trees, and to look at pictures of their flowers and
fruits, and to have your teacher bring into the schoolroom specimens
for examination. If this is all the city children can do (although even
in the city one can do more than this), why, surely it is far better
than nothing.
But best of all is it to go right into the woods and fields where these
strange, interesting creatures are living, and to see for yourselves
their manners and customs.
[Illustration: Berries]
SHOOTING SEEDS
Down by the brook and along the sides of the mountain grows a tall
shrub which is called the witch-hazel. I hope some of you know it by
sight. I am sure that many of you know its name on account of the
extract which is applied so often to bruises and burns.
[Illustration: FIG. 71]
This picture (Fig. 71) shows you a witch-hazel branch bearing both
flowers and fruit; for, unlike any other plant I know, the flower of
the witch-hazel appears late in the fall, when its little nuts are
almost ripe. These nuts come from the flowers of the previous year.
It is always to me a fresh surprise and delight to come upon these
golden blossoms when wandering through the fall woods.
Often the shrub has lost all its leaves before these appear. You almost
feel as if the yellow flowers had made a mistake, and had come out six
months ahead of time, fancying it to be April instead of October. In
each little cluster grow several blossoms, with flower leaves so long
and narrow that they look like waving yellow ribbons.
But to-day we wish chiefly to notice the fruit or nut of the
witch-hazel.
Now, the question is, how does the witch-hazel manage to send the seeds
which lie inside this nut out into the world? I think you will be
surprised to learn just how it does this.
If you have a nut before you, you see for yourselves that this fruit is
not bright-colored and juicy-looking, or apparently good to eat, and
thus likely to tempt either boy or bird to carry it off; you see that
it is not covered with hooks that can lay hold of your clothing, and
so steal a ride; and you see that it has no silky sails to float it
through the air, nor any wings to carry it upon the wind.
And so the witch-hazel, knowing that neither boy nor girl, nor bird nor
beast nor wind, will come to the rescue of its little ones, is obliged
to take matters into its own hands; and this is what it does. It forces
open the ripe nut with such violence, that its little black seeds are
sent rattling off into the air, and do not fall to the ground till they
have traveled some distance from home. Really they are _shot_ out into
the world (Fig. 72).
If you wish to make sure that this is actually so, gather some of these
nuts, and take them home with you. It will not be long before they
begin to pop open, and shoot out their little seeds.
Did you ever hear of Thoreau? He was a man who left his friends and
family to live by himself in the woods he so dearly loved. Here he grew
to know each bird and beast, each flower and tree, almost as if they
were his brothers and sisters. One day he took home with him some of
these nuts, and later he wrote about them in his journal,—
“Heard in the night a snapping sound, and the fall of some small body
on the floor from time to time. In the morning I found it was produced
by the witch-hazel nuts on my desk springing open and casting their
seeds quite across my chamber.”
[Illustration: FIG. 72]
Now, I do not want any of you children to go off by yourselves to live
in the woods; but I should like to think that you could learn to love
these woods and their inmates with something of the love that Thoreau
felt. And if you watch their ways with half the care that he did, some
such love is sure to come.
Although the witch-hazel’s rough way of dealing with its young is not
very common among the plants, we find much the same thing done by the
wild geranium, or crane’s bill, and by the touch-me-not.
The wild geranium is the pretty purplish, or at times pink flower which
blossoms along the roads and in the woods in May and early June.
Its seedbox has five divisions. In fruit this seedbox tapers above into
a long beak, which gives the plant its name of “crane’s bill.” When
the fruit is quite ripe, it splits away from the central part of this
beak in five separate pieces, which spring upward so suddenly that the
seeds are jerked out of the five cells, and flung upon the earth at a
distance of several feet. The picture (Fig. 73) shows you how this is
done. But a little search through the summer woods will bring you to
the plant itself; and if you are patient, perhaps you will see how the
wild geranium gets rid of its children. But though this habit may at
first seem to you somewhat unmotherly, if you stop to think about it
you will see that really the parent plant is doing its best for its
little ones. If they should fall directly upon the ground beneath,
their chances in life would be few. About plants, as about people, you
must not make up your minds too quickly.
[Illustration: FIG. 73]
[Illustration: FIG. 74]
Another plant that all of you country children ought to know, is the
touch-me-not, or jewelweed. Sometimes this is called “lady’s eardrop,”
because its pretty, red-gold, jewel-like flowers remind us of the drops
that once upon a time ladies wore in their ears. These flowers we find
in summer in wet, woody places. In the fall the fruit appears. This
fruit is a little pod (Fig. 74) which holds several seeds. When this
pod is ripe, it bursts open and coils up with an elastic spring which
sends these seeds also far from home (Fig. 75).
This performance of the touch-me-not you can easily see; for its name
“touch-me-not” comes from the fact that if you touch too roughly one of
its well-grown pods, this will spring open and jerk out its seeds in
the way I have just described.
[Illustration: FIG. 75]
[Illustration: FIG. 76]
In Europe grows a curious plant called the “squirting cucumber” (Fig.
76). Its fruit is a small cucumber, which becomes much inflated
with water. When this is detached from its stalk, its contents are
“squirted” out as if from a fountain, and the seeds are thus thrown to
a distance of many feet.
[Illustration: Decoration]
THE CHESTNUT AND OTHER SEEDS
At the head of this chapter you see the fruit of the chestnut tree
(Fig. 77).
What fine October days this picture brings to mind,—clear, cold
mornings when we arm ourselves with baskets and a club, and go
chestnuting.
[Illustration: FIG. 77]
Usually the boys climb the tree, and shake the branches till the open
burrs rattle out their contents. But sometimes a teasing cluster
refuses to set loose its treasure. Then the club comes into play. If
it strikes the great burrs, and raps out their fat chestnuts, a shout
of joy follows.
What a delight it is to hunt in the long grass for the glossy brown
beauties just after a sudden shower from above! No one speaks. All are
bent low in breathless search.
I know of nothing much more perfect in its way than an open chestnut
burr, still holding its two or three fine nuts. Its green, prickly
outer covering makes a fine contrast to the velvety brown lining; and
within this beautiful case the plump, shining nuts are laid with the
daintiest care.
Perhaps the chestnut burr is even safer as a seed case than the apple.
While its seeds (the chestnuts) are young and unripe, it does not stop
to plead, “Pray; don’t destroy my baby nuts!” but it seems to call
out sternly, “Hands off!” and promptly punishes the boy or girl who
disobeys this rough command.
But when the chestnut seeds are quite ripe, then it opens as wide as
it knows how; and very tempting it looks as it unfolds its contents. A
chestnut tree in October looks like one great invitation.
The acorn (Fig. 78), the seed of the oak tree, is pretty enough as a
plaything, but less pleasing than the chestnut. Only the squirrel seems
to find it fair eating.
[Illustration: FIG. 78]
The trees which hide their seeds in nutshells contrive in different
ways to send them abroad.
Many of these nuts are hoarded as winter food by the squirrels. Often
in a moment of fright these little creatures drop them by the way.
Again, they forget just where they deposited their hoard, or for some
other reason they leave it untouched. Thus many nuts are scattered, and
live to change into trees.
Others may fall into the water, and float to distant shores. The
cocoanut, for example, has been carried in this way for hundreds of
miles. Its outer covering protects the seed from being soaked or hurt
by water; and when at last it is washed upon some distant shore, it
sends up a tall cocoanut tree.
[Illustration: Decoration]
SOME STRANGE STORIES
When I began to tell you children about the different ways in which
plants send their young out into the world, I had no idea that I should
take so much time, and cover so many pages with the subject. And now I
realize that I have not told you one half, or one quarter, of all there
is to tell.
You have learned that seeds are scattered abroad by animals that eat
the bright cases in which they are packed, and by animals into whose
hair or clothing they manage to fasten themselves.
You know that sometimes seeds are blown through the air by means of
silky sails to which they are fastened, or else by their little wings.
You discovered that certain plants actually pushed their young from
their cozy homes in no gentle fashion, much as a mother bird shoves her
timid little ones from the edge of the nest.
And in the last chapter you read that occasionally seeds were floated
by water to distant shores.
Now, these are the chief ways in which plants contrive to dispose of
their seeds; but they are not the only ways. Before leaving the subject
altogether, I will mention a few plants which use other contrivances.
[Illustration: FIG. 79]
This picture (Fig. 79) shows you the fruit of the poppy. Many of
you know it well. In the fall you find in the garden these pretty
seedboxes. They answer famously as pepper pots, if one chances to be
playing house in the orchard.
Just below the top of the poppy seedbox the picture shows you a circle
of little openings; and inside the seedbox are many poppy seeds (Fig.
80).
But how can seeds get out of these openings, do you suppose?
If they were lower down, it would be an easy matter for the seeds to
drop out, right on the ground. But perhaps it is well that this cannot
happen. Did such a quantity of seeds fall upon one small bit of earth,
they would have a poor chance for life.
Well, then, you ask, must they wait patiently in the seedbox till some
child comes along and pulls it off for a pepper pot?
[Illustration: FIG. 80]
No, they are not obliged to wait always for you children. This is
fortunate for the poppy plants that are so unlucky as to live in lonely
gardens where no children ever play.
Then what _does_ happen?
If you will go out into the garden the next windy fall day, you will
see for yourselves. You will see the tall poppy plants swaying to and
fro with every gust of wind; and you will see how the seedboxes are
tossed from side to side, and that every now and then a very violent
toss sends the little seeds tumbling head over heels out of the little
openings just as effectively as if the wind too were playing house and
using them as pepper pots.
When the seeds are let loose in this way, the tall poppy plants are
swayed so far to one side, and the wind is blowing so hard, that they
land upon the ground much farther from home than would have been the
case had they fallen through openings cut in the lower part of the
seedbox.
In the East grows a strange plant called the “rose of Jericho.” Its
fruit is a pod. When this plant is nearly ready to get rid of its
seeds, what do you think it does? It lets go its hold upon the earth,
curls itself up into a little ball, and is driven here and there by the
wind. When it finds a nice damp place, it stops and uncurls itself; and
the little pods split open, and drop their seeds on the earth.
Some plants bear fruit that look very much like insects. It is believed
that sometimes these are taken for such, and snapped up by birds, and
thus succeed in getting away from home.
[Illustration: FIG. 81]
This picture (Fig. 81) shows you a pod which, as it lies upon the
ground, looks like a centiped.
Here you have a seed which is shaped and marked like a beetle (Fig. 82).
The next picture (Fig. 83) shows you a seed from the castor-oil plant.
You can see that it might easily be mistaken for some insect.
[Illustration: FIG. 82]
Think how disappointed the bird must be, after having greedily snapped
up and carried off one of these little objects, to discover that for
all his pains he has secured nothing but a dry, tough pod or seed.
[Illustration: FIG. 83]
But if the mother plant really does any thinking at all, cannot you
fancy how she chuckles with delight over the trick she has played, and
the clever way in which she has started her young on its travels?
There is still another way in which birds help to scatter seeds. They
alight in wet places, covering their little feet with mud. Now, a
clot of mud may contain many different seeds; and for days this clot
may stick to the bird’s foot, and thus cause the seeds it holds to be
carried for hundreds of miles.
Have you ever heard of Darwin? He was a great man who spent most of his
life in studying plants and animals.
How many years do you suppose he was interested in the study of those
long, brown worms which you find in quantities in the lawn and after
heavy rains along the sidewalk? At intervals for forty-four years
he studied these little creatures which you girls think ugly and
uninteresting enough, although the boys know they make fine fish bait.
Well, Darwin once raised eighty-two plants from seeds contained in a
clot of earth which was clinging to the leg of a partridge. So you
can see that when a bird gets his feet wet, he may really be doing the
world a service. And it is not likely that he takes cold himself.
Now, I want you children to see how many different ways you can recall
in which plants scatter abroad their little seeds; and later I want you
to go out into the garden, or into the woods, and see if you cannot
discover many of the seeds about which you have been reading. But
better still it would be if you could find others of which I have told
you nothing.
I should like you to make a list of the different plants which you find
in fruit, putting after each name a slight description of the way in
which it gets rid of its seeds. This will not be a stupid task at all
if you set your mind to it. It will give your walks a new pleasure, and
it will bring to your school work something of the freshness and joy
which belong to the woods.
PART II—YOUNG PLANTS
[Illustration: Decoration]
HOW THE BABY PLANT LIVES
When these little seeds at last find a good resting place, what do you
think happens to them? They grow into new plants, of course. But how
does this come about? How does a seed turn into a plant?
I could hardly expect you to guess this, any more than I could have
expected you to guess how the apple flower changes into the apple
fruit. I will tell you a little about it; and then I hope your teacher
will show you real seeds and real plants, and prove to you that what I
have said is really so.
Of course, you believe already that I try to tell you the exact truth
about all these things. But people far wiser than I have been mistaken
in what they thought was true; and so it will be well for you to make
sure, with your own eyes, that I am right in what I say.
[Illustration: FIG. 84]
If you should cut in two the seed of that beautiful flower the garden
peony, and should look at it very closely through a good magnifying
glass, you would find a tiny object such as you see in the half seed
shown in this picture (Fig. 84). Both your eyes and your glass need
to be very good to show you that this little object is _a baby peony
plant_. Fig. 85 gives the little plant as it would look if taken out of
the seed.
Every ripe seed holds a baby plant; and to become a grown-up plant, it
needs just what boy and girl babies need,—food and drink and air.
But shut up so tight in its seed shell, how can it get these?
Well, in this peony seed its food is close at hand. It is packed away
inside the seed, all about the little plant. In the picture (Fig. 84),
everything except the little white spot, which shows the plant, is baby
food,—food that is all prepared to be eaten by a delicate little plant,
and that is suited to its needs just as milk is suited to the needs of
your little sister or brother.
[Illustration: FIG. 85]
The little leaves of the baby plant take in the food that is needed to
make it grow fat and strong.
Now, how does the baby plant get water to drink?
I have asked your teacher to soak over night some peas that have been
dried for planting, and to bring to school to-day a handful of these,
and also a handful which have not been soaked. She will pass these
about, and you can see how different the soaked ones are from the
others. Those that have not been in the water look dried and wrinkled
and old, almost dead in fact; while those which have been soaked are
nearly twice as large. They look fat, and fresh, and full of life. Now,
what has happened to them?
Why, all night long they have been sucking in water through tiny
openings in the seed shell; and this water has so refreshed them,
and so filled the wrinkled coats and swelled them out, that they look
almost ready to burst.
So you see, do you not, how the water manages to get inside the seed so
as to give the baby plant a drink?
Usually it is rather late in the year when seeds fall to the earth.
During the winter the baby plant does not do any drinking; for then the
ground is frozen hard, and the water cannot reach it. But when the warm
spring days come, the ice melts, and the ground is full of moisture.
Then the seed swells with all the water it sucks in, and the baby plant
drinks, drinks, drinks, all day long.
You scarcely need ask how it keeps warm, this little plant. It is
packed away so snugly in the seed shell, and the seed shell is so
covered by the earth, and the earth much of the time is so tucked away
beneath a blanket of snow, that usually there is no trouble at all
about keeping warm.
[Illustration: FIG. 86]
But how, then, does it get air?
Well, of course, the air it gets would not keep alive a human baby. But
a plant baby needs only a little air; and usually enough to keep it in
good condition makes its way down through the snow and earth to the
tiny openings in the seed shell. To be sure, if the earth above is kept
light and loose, the plant grows more quickly, for then the air reaches
it with greater ease.
So now you see how the little plant inside the peony seed gets the food
and drink and air it needs for its growth.
In the picture above (Fig. 86) you get a side view of the baby plant
of the morning-glory, its unripe seed being cut in two. As you look
at it here, its queer shape reminds you of an eel. But if instead
of cutting through the seed, you roll it carefully between your
fingers, and manage to slip off its coat, and if then you take a pin
and carefully pick away the whitish, jelly-like stuff which has been
stored as baby food, you will find a tiny green object which through
a magnifying glass looks like the next picture (Fig. 87). The narrow
piece pointing downward is the stem from which grows the root. Above
this are two leaves.
[Illustration: FIG. 87]
This baby plant is a very fascinating thing to look at. I never seem to
tire of picking apart a young seed for the sake of examining through
a glass these delicate bright-green leaves. It seems so wonderful
that the vine which twines far above our heads, covered with glorious
flowers, should come from this green speck.
As this morning-glory is a vine which lives at many of your doorsteps,
I hope you will not fail to collect its seeds, and look at their baby
plants. When these are very young, still surrounded by a quantity of
baby food, you will not be able to make them out unless you carry them
to your teacher and borrow her glass; but when the seed is ripe, and
the little plant has eaten away most of the surrounding food, it grows
so big that you can see it quite plainly with your own eyes.
A SCHOOLROOM GARDEN
I want you children to do a little gardening in the schoolroom. You
will enjoy this, I am sure.
When I was a child, I took great delight in the experiments that I am
going to suggest to you; and now that I am grown up, I find they please
me even more than they did years ago.
During the past week I have been doing this sort of gardening; and I
have become so interested in the plant babies which I have helped into
the world, that I have not been at all ready to stop playing with them,
even for the sake of sitting down to tell you about them.
To start my garden, I had first to get some seeds. So I put on my hat
and went down to the little shop in the village, half of which is given
up to tailor work, while the other half is devoted to flower raising.
The gray-bearded florist tailor who runs this queer little place was
greatly interested when he heard that I wanted the seeds so that I
might tell you children something of their strange ways.
“Seeds air mighty interestin’ things,” he said. “Be you young or be you
old, there’s nothin’ sets you thinkin’ like a seed.”
Perhaps the florist tailor had been fortunate in his friends; for I
have known both grown-up people and children who year after year could
see the wonder of seed and baby plant, of flower and fruit, without
once stopping to say, “What brings about these changes?”
To “set thinking” some people would take an earthquake or an avalanche;
but when this sort of thing is needed to start their brains working,
the “thinking” is not likely to be good for much.
But I hope that some of you will find plenty to think about in the
seeds which your teacher is going to show you; and I hope that these
thoughts may be the beginning of an interest and curiosity that will
last as long as you live.
The seeds which I got that morning were those of the bean, squash, pea,
and corn; and your teacher has been good enough to get for you these
same seeds, and she will show you how to do with them just what I have
been doing this past week.
First, I filled a pot with finely sifted earth, and planted the
different seeds; then I filled a glass with water, floated some cotton
wool upon its surface, and in this wool laid some beans; and then my
garden planting was done.
During the following days I kept the earth in the pot slightly moist.
The cotton wool in the glass of water did this for itself.
And how carefully I watched my two little gardens!
For three days the pot of earth kept its secret. Nothing happened
there, so far as I could see. But the beans that were laid upon the
cotton wool grew fat and big by the second day, just like those that
your teacher soaked over night; and by the third day their seed coats
had ripped open a little way, just as your coat would rip open if it
were tightly buttoned up and suddenly you grew very fat; and out of the
rip in the seed coat peeped a tiny white thing, looking like the bill
of a chick that is pecking its way out of the eggshell which has become
too small to hold it.
Very quickly this little white tip grew longer. It curved over and bent
downward, piercing its way through the cotton wool into the water.
[Illustration: FIG. 88]
About this time the pot garden began to show signs of a disturbance.
Here and there I saw what looked like the top of a thick green hoop
(Fig. 88).
What had happened, do you think?
Why, first this bean had sucked in from the damp earth so much water
that it had grown too fat and big for the seed coat; and it had torn
this open, just like the other bean, pushing out its little white tip;
and this tip had bent down into the earth and taken a good hold there,
lengthening into a real root, and sending out little root hairs that
fastened it down still more firmly.
But it was not satisfied to do all its growing below. Its upper part
now straightened itself out, and started right up into the air. From a
hoop it turned into a stem which lifted the bean clear above the earth
(Fig. 89).
This bean was no longer the round object we usually call by that name;
for its two halves had opened and spread outward, and from between
these two halves grew a pair of young leaves.
[Illustration: FIG. 89]
As these leaves grew larger, the two half-beans began to shrink,
growing smaller and more withered all the time (Fig. 90).
Why was this, do you suppose?
To make clear the reason of this, to show just why the two halves of
the bean grew smaller as the rest of the young bean plant grew larger,
I must go back a way.
Turn to the picture of the peony seed (Fig. 84). There you can see how
the baby plant is packed away in the midst of a quantity of baby food.
And in the picture of the morning-glory seed (Fig. 86) you see the same
thing.
You remember that day by day the baby plant ate more and more of this
food, and kept growing stronger and bigger, and that all this time the
store of food kept growing smaller and smaller.
Now, if you cut open the bean, you do not see a tiny plant set in the
midst of a store of food.
[Illustration: FIG. 90]
Why is this? This is because the baby bean plant keeps its food in its
own leaves.
The seed coat of the bean is filled by these leaves, for each half of
the bean is really a seed leaf. In these two thick leaves is stored all
the food that is necessary to the life of the baby plant; and because
of all this food which they hold, the bean plant is able to get a
better start in life than many other young plants.
If you soak and strip off its seed coat, and pull apart the two thick
leaves, you will find a tiny pair of new leaves already started
(Fig. 91); but you will see nothing of the sort in the seed of the
morning-glory, for the reason that this is not so well stored with
baby food as to be able to do more than get its seed leaves well under
way.
The pea, like the bean, is so full of food, that it also is able to
take care of a second pair of leaves.
But now to go back to the young bean plant in the schoolroom garden.
We were wondering why the two halves of the bean, which are really the
first pair of leaves, kept growing thinner and smaller as the second
pair grew larger.
[Illustration: FIG. 91]
Perhaps you guess now the reason for this. These first leaves, called
the seed leaves, feed all the rest of the young bean plant.
Of course, as they keep on doing this, they must themselves shrink
away; but they do not cease with their work till the plant is able to
take care of itself.
By this time, however, the seed leaves have nothing left to live upon.
They die of starvation, and soon fade and disappear.
So now you understand just what has happened to the leaves that once
were so fat and large.
And I hope you will remember the difference between the seed of the
morning-glory and that of the bean,—how the morning-glory packs the
baby food inside the seed, of course, but _outside_ the baby plant;
while the bean packs it inside the two seed leaves, which are so thick
that there is no room for anything else within the seed coat.
But really, to understand all that I have been telling you, you must
see it for yourselves; you must hold in your hands the dried bean; you
must examine it, and make sure that its seed shell is filled entirely
by the baby plant; you must see it grow plump and big from the water
which it has been drinking; you must watch with sharp eyes for that
first little rip in the seed coat, and for the putting-out of the tiny
tip, which grows later into stem and root; you must notice how the bent
stem straightens out, and lifts the thick seed leaves up into the air;
and you must observe how that other pair of leaves, which grows from
between the seed leaves, becomes larger and larger as the seed leaves
grow smaller and thinner, and how, when the little plant is able to
hold its own in the world, the seed leaves die away.
And if day by day you follow this young life, with the real wish to
discover its secret, you will begin to understand what the wise old
florist tailor meant when he said,—
“Be you young or be you old, there’s nothin’ sets you thinkin’ like a
seed.”
[Illustration: FIG. 92]
A SCHOOLROOM GARDEN (_Concluded_)
The picture at the top of this page (Fig. 92) shows you how the young
squash plant comes into the world; for you remember that in my pot
garden I planted some squash seeds. And I hope that in your schoolroom
garden you will watch this plant as it makes its first appearance.
The baby food of the squash vine, like that of the bean, is stored away
inside the seed leaves, which on this account are so large that they
quite fill the seed shell. They are not so thick as those of the bean,
but thick enough to hold all the nourishment that is needed to keep the
young plant alive and hearty until it is big enough to shift for itself.
Very soon after this seed is laid in warm, moist earth, its little
plant begins to grow too large for the seed shell, and the white stem
is pushed out through the hole you notice at one end of the seed. This
stem forces its way into the earth below, and puts out a root, and
root fingers. And now its upper part begins to lengthen out and to
straighten itself. In doing this, it pulls the two seed leaves right
out of the seed coat. If it fails at once to get rid of the seed coat,
it lifts this up into the air, on top of its leaves.
[Illustration: FIG. 93]
Often the young maple tree comes into the world in this way, carrying
its seed coat on top of its seed leaves. The maple is another plant
that packs its baby food within the seed leaves instead of round about
them. Perhaps your teacher has saved for you some maple keys (Fig.
93), as the fruit of the maple tree is called. If you split open a
maple key, you will find hidden within one of its halves (Fig. 94) the
beautiful baby tree. This is folded away so neatly that one is tempted
to split open one key after another, for the pleasure of unpacking
other delicate baby maples (Fig. 95).
[Illustration: FIG. 94]
But now let us find out what has happened to the peas which I planted.
[Illustration: FIG. 95]
Peas seem to us so much like beans, that perhaps you think the young
pea baby comes into the world in the same way as the bean plant; but
surely we have nothing here that looks at all like the bean plant.
We see some stems having small, thin, green leaves.
Where are the fat seed leaves, filled with the baby food that keeps the
plant alive? They are not in sight, certainly, so we must start a hunt
for them.
If you will carefully remove the earth from about this little pea
plant, you will soon find that the pea seed from which it is growing
lies buried in the earth (Fig. 96). This pea seed, like that of the
bean, is made up chiefly of what really are two seed leaves, although
in the case of the pea it may seem only as a matter of politeness that
we give them the name of “leaves;” for in the pea these seed leaves lie
buried in the earth, and split open just enough to allow the little pea
plant to grow up into the air.
[Illustration: FIG. 96]
But like the seed leaves of the bean, they are fat and full of food,
and care for the young plant just as devotedly as did those of the
bean. When this young plant needs them no more, like those of the bean,
they die of starvation.
[Illustration: FIG. 97]
Within the acorn, the seed leaves of the great oak tree grow together.
These lie quietly in the acorn shell while sending out supplies of food
to the root and stem and leaves of the young oak (Fig. 97). Walnut and
chestnut leaves act much in the same manner. But these first leaves of
the walnut do not grow together, as you know. Each one is packed away
separately in half of the walnut shell.
The corn has but one seed leaf, which makes it unlike all the other
plants about which we have been reading; but it resembles the pea, the
acorn, the walnut, and the chestnut in this,—that the one seed leaf
lies buried in the earth, as do their two seed leaves.
[Illustration: FIG. 98]
The baby corn plant is very small. It does not fill the whole seed
shell, but gets its nourishment from the food by which it is surrounded.
This picture shows you a seed or grain of corn cut in two (Fig. 98). Of
course, this is much larger than life. In the center you see the tiny
plant. All about is the baby food.
The next picture (Fig. 99) shows you the young corn plant.
[Illustration: FIG. 99]
I want you to remember that this is the only plant we have seen with
but one seed leaf. This one seed leaf never comes out of the seed
shell. There are other plants of the same kind. All the grass plants
have but one seed leaf, and the blue flag that grows in wet meadows,
and all the lilies.
[Illustration: FIG. 100]
[Illustration: FIG. 101]
Only a few plants have more than two of these seed leaves. The pine
trees are among these few. This picture (Fig. 100) shows you a baby
pine tree, still cradled in its seed, surrounded by baby food; and the
next one (Fig. 101) shows you the pine just starting out in the world,
with its six seed leaves.
When you study the botany that is written for older people, you will
find that plants are set apart in separate groups, according to the
number of their seed leaves.
Strange though it may seem to you, plants with but one seed leaf have
certain habits that you will not find in a plant with two seed leaves;
and a plant with two seed leaves, long after these have passed away,
will show by root and stem that it had more than one seed leaf.
In your schoolroom garden I should like you to grow side by side, first
a plant with but one seed leaf, next a plant with two seed leaves, and
lastly a plant with more than two.
[Illustration: Decoration]
SEEDS AS FOOD
I want you to think for yourselves why it is fortunate for us human
beings that many plants store away in their seeds so much baby food.
“Because without this the little plants would die, and we should have
no new plants to make the world beautiful to live in,” some child
replies.
That answer is a good one; but it is not just the answer that I wish.
Can you think of any other way in which we all benefit by the large
supply of baby food that is packed away in certain seeds?
If the right answer to this question does not occur to you, try to
remember which of those seeds we have been reading about have been
supplied with a specially large amount of this food.
You remember that the bean holds so much baby food in its seed leaves,
that these are very fat. So do the pea, the walnut, and the chestnut.
The seed of corn, also, is well filled with baby food, only in the corn
seed it is packed around the outside of the seed leaves, instead of the
inside.
But the squash, although it puts in its seed leaves enough food to keep
its young plant well and hearty, does not lay by any great quantity of
this material. Neither does the maple tree, which also stores the seed
leaves with food, but does not fill them nearly so full as do the bean
and the pea.
And the morning-glory, which packs its precious white jelly (this is
what the little morning-glory plant likes to eat) all about its young,
lays up only just enough of this to last until the baby plant breaks
out of its seed shell.
Now, what difference do we find between these seeds?—between the seeds
of squash, morning-glory, and maple, which have only a small supply
of baby food, and those other ones, such as bean and pea and corn and
walnut and chestnut, which are packed full of nourishment?
“Why, these last ones are good to eat!” you exclaim. “They are part of
the food we live upon, while the squash seeds, the morning-glory seeds,
and the maple seeds are not good to eat.”
Yes, that is the answer which I wished. The baby food in these seeds
makes “grown-up” food for us. We get strength and nourishment from the
same material which the mother plant has prepared for her young.
Now try to name the different seeds which help to make up our food.
Already we have mentioned several kinds. Besides these, there is the
oat seed (from which comes oatmeal), the wheat seed (from which comes
flour for our bread), the coffee seed, the buckwheat seed, the peanut
seed, the almond seed, and many others, some of which will come to your
mind from time to time.
I wish you would make for your teacher a list of all those that you can
recall; or, better still, I should like you to collect as many as you
possibly can, and bring them to your next class. If you cannot find the
seeds just as they grow upon the plant, you may be able to get them
prepared for use. A pinch of flour, for instance, would answer for
wheat seeds, of oatmeal for oat seeds.
I have in mind a number of seeds that you can easily secure, of which I
have not spoken; and it will be interesting at our next meeting to see
which child in this class is able to make the best exhibition of seed
food.
[Illustration: Decoration]
AN IMPATIENT PLANT BABY
Plant babies are not alike as to the time they take in finding their
way out of the ripe seed shell into the world.
Certain seeds need only two or three days in which to bring forth
their young. Perhaps we ourselves have seen the white tip of the bean
rip open its shell the second or third day after being laid upon the
moist cotton wool. But if we had not given this bean plant a good
chance to grow, it would have kept alive and hearty inside its shell
for a long time. This is not the case with all plants. Certain seeds
need to be planted soon after they are ripe. If they are not, their
baby plants die.
But usually seeds take such good care of their young, that they will
live for a long time, even if shut up in a dark closet or a table
drawer, instead of being comfortably laid away in the warm, moist earth.
Wonderful stories are told of seeds that have sprouted after having
lain buried in some Egyptian tomb for thousands of years; but the
people best fitted to judge of the truth of such stories do not believe
them. There is no doubt, however, that some seeds keep their baby
plants alive for many years.
Early in the summer the seeds of the red maple fall to the ground;
and soon after this the young plants find their way up into the world
above. Later in the year the sugar maple sheds its seeds. These lie
sleeping in the earth through the winter. When the warm spring days
come, the baby plants awake, and stretch themselves, and join the
hundreds of other, just-awakened baby plants that are flocking into the
world above. So you see that seeds of the same family have different
habits in this matter.
There is one curious tree that lives in swamps along the seashore of
hot countries. It is called the mangrove. The baby plants of this tree
are so anxious to get out into the world, that they do not wait until
the seeds in which they are hidden are set free from the mangrove fruit.
It is as if the little plants inside the apple seed could not wait
until the apple flesh should be eaten or should decay, but insisted on
struggling first out of the seed into the apple, and then through the
apple into the light and air.
[Illustration: FIG. 102]
This picture (Fig. 102) shows you the mangrove fruit. It looks more
like a pear than an apple. In the middle of this lies hidden one seed.
As time goes on, this grows bigger and bigger, trying to make room for
the impatient little plant within; but it does not grow fast enough to
please this ambitious young one, which finally overcomes the difficulty
by piercing the seed shell with its stem. This stem bores its way
right down through the mangrove fruit, and breaks into the outer air.
It keeps on growing in this way for many weeks, till at last it is a
foot long (Fig. 103). Try to fancy how odd a mangrove tree must look at
this time, covered with mangroves, from each one projecting this long
odd-looking beak, which one could hardly guess to be the stem of the
baby plant within the fruit.
[Illustration: FIG. 103]
We read that these long-beaked fruits bob about with every breath of
wind in a fashion that gives the tree a still stranger look than on a
day when the air is not stirring. Picture a pear tree from every pear
of which the long stem of a baby pear tree protrudes. Would you not be
eager to find one of these pears and cut it open, and see what sort of
a baby plant it must be that could send out such a great stem?
But perhaps the strangest part of the story is yet to come. At last all
of these great beaks fall away from the fruit; and from the broken top
of each grows a little bud, such as you see in the picture (Fig. 104).
When this heavy beak falls upon the muddy ground below, its pointed end
strikes first, and so bores into the earth.
[Illustration: FIG. 104]
Even if it happens to fall into the water, it does this with so much
force that it will pierce its way to the depth of eighteen or twenty
inches, and yet remain standing erect when it strikes bottom, where
it sends out a root. When it has secured a good hold, the little bud
unfolds into four leaves. Above these grow larger, shining leaves; and
soon the ground beneath an old mangrove tree is covered with these
daring little adventurers.
[Illustration: Decoration]
A HUMPBACKED PLANT BABY
Now let us pause for a moment, and try to recall a little of what we
have learned since school opened.
We learned that the fruit of a plant is the part which holds its seed,
and that there are many different kinds of fruits; that the burr of
the burdock, the pod of the milkweed, the puff of the dandelion, are
fruits, as well as the apple and the pear, the acorn and the walnut.
We learned that the chief importance of these fruits lies in the fact
just mentioned, that they hold the seeds of the plants.
Then we learned something about the many different kinds of seeds, and
of how these seeds managed to become separated from the parent plant,
and to get a start in life.
Next we read of the baby plant which lies hidden within every perfect
seed. We learned how this is kept safe and warm, and supplied with
food, and how at last it finds its way out of the seed shell into the
world.
If you have been using this book in the right way, not only have you
read about these things, but you have seen them with your own eyes.
Some of the fruits you have tasted, and others you have handled.
You have examined the silky sails of the seeds which float through the
air, and the hooks and claws of those little tramps that manage to
steal free rides.
And some seeds you have planted. These you have watched day by day, and
you have seen that the baby plants burst their seed shells much as a
chick bursts its eggshell.
Now what I want you to do is this: I want you to study carefully the
different parts of these little creatures that are living out their
strange, beautiful lives under your very eyes. I want you to watch them
from day to day; to learn how they eat and drink and work and grow,
until you feel that you know them really well.
First let us look at this bean plant which is breaking its way through
the earth.
Just what do you see?
You see what looks like a thick, green hoop (Fig. 105), do you not?
What is it, this odd-looking hoop?
[Illustration: FIG. 105]
Perhaps some of you still think that it is the root, for I remember
that I too once supposed the root was the part of the plant which first
left the bean.
But really this green hoop is made by the bent stem. We know that this
is the stem because from its lower end grows the root, while from its
upper part grow the leaves, flowers, and fruit.
[Illustration: FIG. 106]
Certainly it is curious, the way in which this bean plant comes
into the world. Why does it not grow straight up and down, do you
suppose?—up with its stem and leaves, and down with its root?
But we must not forget that whenever some habit on the part of a plant
has filled us with surprise, sooner or later we have discovered that
the plant’s reason for it was a good one.
[Illustration: FIG. 107]
What reason can the bean plant have for coming into the world crooked?
Before reading further, try to think this out for yourselves. Try each
one of you to form an idea of what the bean plant gains by pushing
through the earth with this hooped stem.
I hope some of you may guess correctly. But even if you have not been
successful in naming the cause of the bean plant’s humped back, at
least you have been working your brains; and every time you do this,
you help to keep them in good order.
If you let your brain lie idle, and allow your teacher or your book
to do for you not only all the asking of questions, but also all the
thinking-out of answers, it will get as dull and rusty and good for
nothing as a machine that is laid by for a long time gets dull and
rusty and good for nothing.
I should be sorry to think that any of you children were carrying about
in your heads any such rusty, good-for-nothing brains. So if you wish
to keep them bright and clean, and in good working order, you must try
to do your own thinking.
And now, hoping you have tried to guess for yourselves the reason of
this crooked back, I will explain it to you.
But first handle carefully the tip of one of the upper leaves on the
larger bean plant. You see how delicate this is.
Then feel how firm and hard and tough is the green hoop of the plant
which is just breaking through the earth.
Now suppose the bean plant had grown straight up into the air, would
not its uppermost part have been the delicate leaf tips?
Can you not see that these would have been too frail to work their way
uninjured through the earth?
But by crooking its stout stem the plant opened quite easily a path for
itself and for its leaves, and no harm was done anywhere (Figs. 106,
107). Was not this a clever thought? But really every step in the life
of the plant is full of interest, if we watch it with sharp eyes and a
brain in good order.
PART III—ROOTS AND STEMS
[Illustration: Decoration]
ROOT HAIRS
Carefully pull up one of your bean plants and look at its root (Fig.
108).
You see that the root grows downward from the lower part of the stem.
This bean root looks not unlike a bunch of dirty threads, some quite
thick, others very thin. If you look at these thread-like roots in a
good light, perhaps you may be able to see growing from them a quantity
of tiny hairs.
Now, what is the use of such a root as this?
Surely some of you are able to guess at the object of this root, and I
will help the others to the answer.
[Illustration: FIG. 108]
Give a firm though gentle tug to one of the larger plants,—one of those
that are growing in the pot of earth.
Does it come out easily in your fingers?
Not at all. Unless you have been really rough, and used quite a good
deal of strength, the little plant has kept its hold.
What holds it down, do you suppose?
Ah! Now you know what I am trying to get at. Its root is what holds it
in place; and this holding of the plant in place is one of its uses.
Its thread-like branches are so many fingers that are laying hold of
the earth. Each little thread makes it just so much the more difficult
to uproot the plant.
I think you know already that another use of the root is to obtain
nourishment for the plant.
These thread-like roots, you notice, creep out on every side in their
search for food and drink. The water they are able to suck in easily
by means of tiny mouths, which we cannot see. But the plant needs a
certain amount of earth food, which in its solid state could not slip
down these root throats any more easily than a young baby could swallow
a lump of sugar.
Now, how is the plant to get this food, which it needs if it is to grow
big and hearty?
Suppose the doctor should tell your mother that a lump of sugar was
necessary to the health of your tiny baby brother, what would she do
about it?
Would she put the great lump into the baby’s mouth?
You laugh at the very idea. Such a performance might choke the baby to
death, you know quite well.
Perhaps you think she would break the lump into small pieces, and try
to make the baby swallow these; but even these small pieces might prove
very dangerous to the little throat that had never held a solid morsel.
“She would melt the sugar in water, then the baby could swallow it,”
one of you exclaims.
That is exactly what she would do. She would melt, or dissolve as
we say, this sugar in water. Then there would be no difficulty in
its slipping down the little throat; for you know when anything is
thoroughly melted or dissolved, it breaks up into such tiny pieces
that the eye cannot see them. When you melt a lump of sugar in a glass
of water, the sugar is all there as much as it ever was, although its
little grains no longer cling together in one big lump.
And so when the plant needs some food that the little root hairs are
not able to swallow, it does just what the mother does. It melts or
dissolves the solid food so that this is able to slip quite easily down
the root throats.
But how does it manage this?
No wonder you ask. A root cannot fill a glass with water, as your
mother did. Even if it could, much of this solid food which is needed
by the plant would not melt in water, or in anything but certain acids;
for you know that not everything will dissolve, like sugar, in water.
If I place a copper cent in a glass of water, it will remain a copper
cent, will it not? But if I go into a drug shop and buy a certain acid,
and place in this the copper cent, it will dissolve almost immediately;
that is, it will break up into so many tiny pieces that you will no
longer see anything that looks at all like a cent.
And as much of this earth food, like the copper cent, can only be
dissolved in certain acids, how is the plant to obtain them? Certainly
it is not able to go to the drug shop for the purpose, any more than it
was able to fill a glass with water.
Fortunately it does not need to do either of these things.
If you will look closely at the root of a plant that has been raised
in water, you will see that it is rough with a quantity of tiny hairs.
These little hairs hold the acid which can dissolve the solid earth
food. When they touch this food, they send out some of the acid, and in
this it is soon dissolved. Then the little mouths suck it in, and it is
carried up through the root into the rest of the plant.
Would you have guessed that plants were able to prepare their food in
any such wonderful way as this? It surprised me very much, I remember,
to learn that a root could give out acids, and so dissolve the earth
food it needed.
[Illustration: Decoration]
ROOTS AND UNDERGROUND STEMS
In the last chapter you learned that the root of the bean plant has two
uses.
It holds the plant in place, and it provides it with food and drink.
Such a root as this of the bean plant—one that is made up of what looks
like a bunch of threads—is called a “fibrous” root.
The next picture shows you the root of a beet plant (Fig. 109).
Such a thick, fat root as this of the beet is called a “fleshy” root.
The carrot, turnip, radish, and sweet potato, all have fleshy roots.
This beet root, like that of the bean, is useful both in holding the
plant in place and in providing it with food and drink.
But the fleshy root of the beet does something else,—something that is
not attempted by the fibrous root of the bean.
Here we must stop for a moment and look into the life of the beet plant.
During its first year, the beet puts out leaves; it neither flowers nor
fruits, but it eats and drinks a great deal. And as it does not use up
any of this food in flowering or fruiting, it is able to lay by much
of it in its root, which grows large and heavy in consequence. When
the next spring comes on, the beet plant is not obliged, like so many
of its brothers and sisters, to set out to earn its living. This is
provided already. And so it bursts into flower without delay, its food
lying close at hand in its great root.
[Illustration: FIG. 109]
So you see that a fleshy root, like that of the beet, does three
things:—
1. It holds the plant in place.
2. It provides it with food and drink.
3. It acts as a storehouse.
These plants that lay by food for another year are useful as food for
man. Their well-stocked roots are taken out of the ground and eaten by
us before the plant has had the chance to use up its food in fulfilling
its object in life, that of fruiting. Of course, when it is not allowed
to live long enough to flower and fruit, it brings forth no young
plants. So a habit which at first was of use to the plant becomes the
cause of its destruction.
Perhaps you think that the white potato (Fig. 110) is a plant with a
fleshy root.
[Illustration: FIG. 110]
If so, you will be surprised to learn that this potato is not a root at
all, but a stem.
You think it looks quite unlike any other stem that you have ever seen.
Probably you do not know that many stems grow underneath the ground,
instead of straight up in the air.
[Illustration: FIG. 111]
[Illustration: FIG. 112]
If you find something in the earth that you take to be a root, you can
feel pretty sure that it really is a stem, if it bears anything like
either buds or leaves. A true root bears only root branches and root
hairs. But in this white potato we find what we call “eyes.” These
eyes are buds from which new potato plants will grow. Close to these
are little scales which really are leaves. So we know that the potato
is a stem, not a root. But this you could not have found out for
yourselves, even with the sharpest of eyes.
Fig. 111 shows you the thick, fat, underground stem of the cyclamen.
From its lower part grow the true roots.
Next you have that of the crocus (Fig. 112), while here to the right
is that of the wood lily (Fig. 113). This is covered with underground
leaves.
[Illustration: FIG. 113]
All these stems are usually called roots. In the botanies such an
underground stem as that of the Jack-in-the-pulpit (Fig. 114) is named
a “corm,” while one like that of the crocus is called a “bulb” (Fig.
112). All have a somewhat rounded shape.
[Illustration: FIG. 114]
[Illustration: FIG. 115]
During our walks in the woods last fall, often we found the Solomon’s
seal, and stopped to admire its curved stem, hung with blue berries.
I hope one of you boys whipped out your pocketknife and dug into the
earth till you found its underground stem (Fig. 115). This was laid
lengthwise, its roots growing from its lower side. From its upper side,
close to one end, sprang the growing plant. But what causes those
round, curious-looking scars?
These scars are what give the plant its name of “Solomon’s seal.” They
are supposed to look like the mark left by a seal upon wax.
They show where the underground stem has budded in past years, sending
up plants which in turn withered away. Each plant has left a scar which
shows one year in the life of the underground stem.
Next spring when you find in the woods the little yellow bells of the
Solomon’s seal, I think you will have the curiosity to dig down and
find out the age of some of these plants.
Another plant with an underground stem is the beautiful bloodroot. As
its name tells you, this so-called root contains a juice that looks
something like blood. Such underground stems as those of the Solomon’s
seal and bloodroot are called “rootstocks.” Rootstocks, corms, and
bulbs are all storehouses of plant food, and make possible an early
flowering the following spring.
[Illustration: Decoration]
ABOVE-GROUND ROOTS
But before we finished talking about roots we were led away by
underground stems. This does not matter much, however, for these
underground stems are still called roots by many people.
Just as stems sometimes grow under ground, roots sometimes grow above
ground.
Many of you know the English ivy. This is one of the few plants which
city children know quite as well as, if not better than, country
children; for in our cities it nearly covers the walls of the churches.
In England it grows so luxuriantly that some of the old buildings are
hidden beneath masses of its dark leaves.
This ivy plant springs from a root in the earth; but as it makes its
way upward, it clings to the stone wall by means of the many air roots
which it puts forth (Fig. 116).
Our own poison ivy is another plant with air roots used for climbing
purposes. Often these roots make its stem look as though it were
covered with a heavy growth of coarse hair.
[Illustration: FIG. 116]
There are some plants which take root in the branches of trees. Many
members of the Orchid family perch themselves aloft in this fashion.
But the roots which provide these plants with the greater part of
their nourishment are those which hang loosely in the air. One of
these orchids you see in the picture (Fig. 117). It is found in warm
countries. The orchids of our part of the world grow in the ground in
everyday fashion, and look much like other plants.
[Illustration: FIG. 117]
These hanging roots which you see in the picture are covered with a
sponge-like material, by means of which they suck in from the air water
and gases.
In summer, while hunting berries or wild flowers by the stream that
runs through the pasture, you have noticed that certain plants seemed
to be caught in a tangle of golden threads. If you stopped to look
at this tangle, you found little clusters of white flowers scattered
along the thread-like stems (Fig. 118); then, to your surprise, you
discovered that nowhere was this odd-looking stem fastened to the
ground.
It began and ended high above the earth, among the plants which crowded
along the brook’s edge.
[Illustration: FIG. 118]
Perhaps you broke off one of these plants about which the golden
threads were twining. If so, you found that these threads were fastened
firmly to the plant by means of little roots which grew into its stem,
just as ordinary roots grow into the earth.
This strange plant is called the “dodder.” When it was still a baby
plant, it lay within its seed upon the ground, just like other baby
plants; and when it burst its seed shell, like other plants it sent its
roots down into the earth.
But unlike any other plant I know of, it did not send up into the air
any seed leaves. The dodder never bears a leaf.
It sent upward a slender golden stem. Soon the stem began to sweep
slowly through the air in circles, as if searching for something. Its
movements were like those of a blind man who is feeling with his hands
for support. And this is just what the plant was doing: it was feeling
for support. And it kept up its slow motion till it found the plant
which was fitted to give it what it needed.
Having made this discovery, it put out a little root. This root it
sent into the juicy stem of its new-found support. And thereafter,
from its private store, the unfortunate plant which had been chosen as
the dodder’s victim was obliged to give food and drink to its greedy
visitor.
And now what does this dodder do, do you suppose? Perhaps you think
that at least it has the grace to do a little something for a living,
and that it makes its earth root supply it with part of its food.
Nothing of the sort. Once it finds itself firmly rooted in the stem
of its victim, it begins to grow vigorously. With every few inches of
its growth it sends new roots deep into this stem. And when it feels
quite at home, and perfectly sure of its board, it begins to wither
away below, where it is joined to its earth root. Soon it breaks off
entirely from this, and draws every bit of its nourishment from the
plant or plants in which it is rooted.
Now stop a moment and think of the almost wicked intelligence this
plant has seemed to show,—how it keeps its hold of the earth till its
stem has found the plant which will be compelled to feed it, and how it
gives up all pretense of self-support, once it has captured its prey.
You have heard of men and women who do this sort of thing,—who shirk
all trouble, and try to live on the work of others; and I fear you know
some boys and girls who are not altogether unlike the dodder,—boys and
girls who never take any pains if they can possibly help it, who try to
have all of the fun and none of the work; but did you ever suppose you
would come across a plant that would conduct itself in such a fashion?
Of course, when the dodder happens to fasten itself upon some wild
plant, little harm is done. But unfortunately it is very partial to
plants that are useful to men, and then we must look upon it as an
enemy.
Linen is made from the flax plant, and this flax plant is one of the
favorite victims of the dodder. Sometimes it will attack and starve to
death whole fields of flax.
But do not let us forget that we happen to be talking about the dodder
because it is one of the plants which put out roots above ground.
[Illustration: FIG. 119]
There is one plant which many of you have seen, that never, at any time
of its life, is rooted in the earth, but which feeds always upon the
branches of the trees in which it lives.
This plant (Fig. 119) is one of which perhaps you hear and see a good
deal at Christmas time. It is an old English custom, at this season, to
hang somewhere about the house a mistletoe bough (for the mistletoe
is the plant I mean) with the understanding that one is free to steal
a kiss from any maiden caught beneath it. And as mistletoe boughs are
sold on our street corners and in our shops at Christmas, there has
been no difficulty in bringing one to school to-day.
The greenish mistletoe berries are eaten by birds. Often their seeds
are dropped by these birds upon the branches of trees. There they hold
fast by means of the sticky material with which they are covered. Soon
they send out roots which pierce the bark, and, like the roots of the
dodder, suck up the juices of the tree, and supply the plant with
nourishment.
Then there are water roots as well as earth roots. Some of these water
roots are put forth by plants which are nowhere attached to the earth.
These are plants which you would not be likely to know about. One of
them, the duckweed, is very common in ponds; but it is so tiny that
when you have seen a quantity of these duckweeds, perhaps you have
never supposed them to be true plants, but rather a green scum floating
on the top of the water.
But the duckweed is truly a plant. It has both flower and fruit,
although without a distinct stem and leaves; and it sends down into the
water its long, hanging roots, which yet do not reach the ground.
There are other plants which have at the same time underground roots
and water roots.
Rooted in the earth on the borders of a stream sometimes you see a
willow tree which has put out above-ground roots. These hang over the
bank and float in the water, apparently with great enjoyment; for
roots not only seem to seek the water, but to like it, and to flourish
in it.
If you break off at the ground one of your bean plants, and place the
slip in a glass of water, you will see for yourselves how readily it
sends out new roots.
I have read of a village tree the roots of which had made their way
into a water pipe. Here they grew so abundantly that soon the pipe was
entirely choked. This rapid, luxuriant growth was supposed to have been
caused by the water within the pipe.
So you see there are underground roots and above-ground roots and water
roots. Usually, as you know, the underground roots get their food from
the earth; but sometimes, as with the Indian pipe, they feed on dead
plants, and sometimes, as with the yellow false foxglove, on other
living roots.
[Illustration: Decoration]
WHAT FEW CHILDREN KNOW
To-day we must take another look at the plants in the schoolroom garden.
By this time some of them have grown quite tall. Others are just
appearing above the earth.
Here is a young morning-glory (Fig. 120). We see that its stem, like
that of the bean, was the first thing to come out of the seed. This
stem has turned downward into the earth. From its lower end grows the
root, which buries itself deeper and deeper.
An older plant shows us that the upper part of the stem straightens
itself out and grows upward, bearing with it a pair of leaves (Fig.
121).
From between these starts a tiny bud, that soon unfolds into a fresh
leaf, which is carried upward by a new piece of stem.
On the tip of this new piece of stem grows another bud, which also
enlarges into a leaf, and in the same way as before is borne upward
(Fig. 122).
[Illustration: FIG. 120]
In this fashion the plant keeps growing bigger and bigger. Soon
branches start from the sides of the stem, and later flowers and fruits.
So we see that it is the stem which bears all the other parts of the
plant.
Most people think that the plant springs from the root; but you
children know better. With your own eyes, here in the schoolroom, you
have seen that instead of the stem growing from the root, the root
grows from the stem.
[Illustration: FIG. 121]
That more people have not found this out, is because they do not use
their eyes rightly.
Every spring hundreds and thousands of baby plants make their way out
of the seed shell into the world, just as you saw the baby bean plant
do, sending out first its little stem, which pointed downward into
the earth and started a root. And every spring there are hundreds of
thousands of men and women, and boys and girls, who go through the
woods and fields, and across the parks and along the streets, as though
they were blind, taking no notice of the wonders all about them.
[Illustration: FIG. 122]
[Illustration: Vine]
PLANTS THAT CANNOT STAND ALONE
Already we have learned that some stems grow under ground, and that by
most people these are called roots.
And among those which grow above the ground we see many different kinds.
The stem of Indian corn grows straight up in the air, and needs no help
in standing erect.
Fig. 123 shows you the morning-glory plant, the stem of which is unable
to hold itself upright without assistance. A great many plants seem to
need this same sort of help; and it is very interesting to watch their
behavior.
The stem of the young morning-glory sweeps slowly through the air in
circles, in search of some support.
You remember that the curious dodder acted in this same way, and that
its movements reminded us of the manner in which a blind man feels
about him.
When the morning-glory finds just the support it needs, it lays hold of
it, and twists about it, and then climbs upward with great satisfaction.
I want you to watch this curious performance. It is sure to amuse
you. The plant seems to know so well what it is about, and it acts so
sensibly when it finds what it wants.
But if it happens to meet a glass tube, or something too smooth to give
it the help it needs, it slips off it, and seems almost as discouraged
as a boy would be who fails in his attempt to climb a slippery tree or
telegraph pole.
[Illustration: FIG. 123]
The bean is another plant whose stem is not strong enough to hold it
erect without help. But, unlike the morning-glory, the stem of the bean
does not twist about the first stick it finds. Instead it sends out
many shorter stems which do this work of reaching after and twining
about some support. In this same way the pea is able to hold up its
head in the world.
[Illustration: FIG. 124]
Other plants are supported by their leafstalks. These twist about
whatever sticks or branches they can find, and so prevent the plant
from falling. The picture (Fig. 124) shows you how the garden
nightshade climbs by its leafstalk. The beautiful clematis clambers all
over the roadside thicket in the same way.
The English ivy and the poison ivy, as we have learned already, climb
by the help of roots which their stems send out into the trunks of
trees and the crevices of buildings.
The stems of the Virginia creeper and of the Japanese ivy give birth to
smaller stems, such as you see in the picture below. When the tips of
these reach the wall, or the tree trunk up which the plant is trying
to climb, they broaden out into little flat, round plates, which, like
tiny claws, cling to the surface (Fig. 125).
[Illustration: FIG. 125]
I hope your teacher will tell you where you can find one of these two
plants, for in the country the creeper is plentiful, and the Japanese
ivy is planted freely in our cities; and I hope you will go and see how
firmly these little flattened stems cling to the wall or to the tree
trunk. Try gently to pull off one of these determined little stems, and
I think you will admire it for its firm grip.
There are other than climbing plants whose stems are not strong enough
to stand up straight without help.
Think of the beautiful water lily. If you have ever spent a morning
in a boat (as I hope you have, for it is a delightful way to spend a
morning) hunting water lilies, you will remember that these flowers
float on top of the water; and when you reach over to pick them, you
find the tall flower stems standing quite erect in the water.
But what happened when you broke them off, and held them in your hand?
Why, these long stems proved to have no strength at all. They flopped
over quite as helplessly as the morning-glory vine would do if you
unwound it from the wires up which it was climbing; and you saw that
they had only been able to stand up straight because of the help the
water had given them.
[Illustration: Decoration]
SOME HABITS OF STEMS
Beside the stems which stand erect without help (like that of the
corn), and those which climb by means of some support (like those of
the morning-glory and bean), and those which are held up by the water
(like that of the water lily), there are stems which slant upward (like
that of the red clover), stems which lie upon the ground (like that of
the snowberry), and stems which creep (that is, which run along the
ground), and which strike root, and so give rise to new plants (like
those of the white clover and strawberry).
With the new plants you meet, try always to notice to which of these
different classes their stems belong; for later, when you wish to use
the botany and to learn the names of the plants, this habit of noticing
things will help you greatly.
Then, too, with every new plant, you should find out whether its stem
is round or square, and whether it is smooth or hairy, or if it is at
all thorny.
The thorns and hairs which some plants scatter over their stems protect
them from animals and insects, which might otherwise do them an injury.
By the thorns little snails are prevented from climbing up the stems
and eating away the green leaves above; and the cows and horses are
pretty sure to leave the thorny plants well alone. It is easy to
understand why we find thistle plants growing thickly in the pasture,
which is nearly bare of everything else. Long ago these thistles
clothed themselves in an armor of prickles, and ever since they have
been successful in waging war against the cattle.
Sometimes a tree will cover its lower part only with thorns. Why is
this, do you suppose?
This is because only the lower branches are within reach of the cattle.
Only these have any need of a suit of thorns. The wild pear, which
grows in Europe, is such a tree as this.
A stem that is covered with hairs, and also one that is sticky in
spots, serves to protect its flowers from an attack by ants, or
by other insects that might do them harm; for these flowers, you
remember, hold the golden dust which works such wonders when carried
to another flower. And you recall, that, when bees go to plants for
the sweet stuff from which honey is made, they carry this flower dust
from blossom to blossom. But if the sweet stuff is given up to greedy
insects, then this good work is not done; for the bees get disgusted,
and stop visiting the plants which do not take more pains to please
them. And so oftentimes the plant covers its stem with hairs or with
sticky drops, so that the meddlesome little thieves cannot get up to
the blossom at all.
So if you pick a flower which leaves your fingers sticky, you must
remember that the plant is only doing its duty in trying to please the
bees.
Although I have seen these plants do so many queer things that I am
learning not to be surprised at their clever ways, I must own that I
was a little astonished to see how anxious one of them was to save
itself unnecessary trouble.
There is a plant called the “amphibious knotweed.” This is a rather
difficult name, I know. This word “amphibious” is applied to something
that can live both in water and on land; and this plant grows sometimes
in the pond or river, and sometimes on the shore.
When on land, its stem is covered with the hairs which serve to keep
meddlesome insects from climbing up to its pretty balls of pink
flowers. In the water there is no danger of any such attack from
insects; and so when it happens to grow in the pond or river, this
knowing little plant does not trouble itself to clothe with hairs its
stem, but leaves this quite smooth.
Next summer I hope you will hunt up the amphibious knotweed, and will
compare the smooth water stem with the hairy one that grows on land.
[Illustration: Decoration]
STEMS AND SEED LEAVES
The smaller plants usually have green stems. The larger ones have
brown, woody stems, such as you see in bushes and trees; for the trunk
of the biggest tree in the world is nothing but a great stem.
The delicate green stems die down to the ground during the cold winter.
Sometimes the whole plant dies, the root below as well as the stem
above ground. But often the root (or what we usually call the root)
lives, and sends up a fresh stem the next year.
But the woody stems live through the winter, and put out fresh leaves
and branches the next spring.
Without a magnifying glass, it is difficult to see of just what the
green stems of the small plants are made up; and these you can pass
by for the present. But if your teacher will cut across the stem of
a large rose, you can see here an outer covering, _the green skin_;
within this, a _ring of woody material_; and in the center of the stem,
a _soft white stuff_ called “pith.”
When we were reading about seed leaves, I told you that by the stem and
leaves of a plant you could tell whether it brought into the world more
than one seed leaf.
Now, when a stem like that of the rose is divided into three
well-defined parts,—the skin, or bark, outside; next the woody part;
and the soft white pith in the middle,—then you can be pretty sure that
the plant had more than one seed leaf.
[Illustration: FIG. 126]
This picture (Fig. 126) shows you a section of a cornstalk. Here you do
not see the three parts that were so plain in the rose stem, for the
woody part is not gathered together in a ring: it is scattered through
the soft part, so that you cannot distinguish the one from the other.
Running lengthwise you see the scattered bundles of woody threads, the
cut ends of which give the dotted look on top.
Now, such a stem as this of the corn shows you that the plant was born
with only one seed leaf.
Try to remember the difference between these two stems.
This next picture (Fig. 127) shows a part of the trunk or stem of the
fir tree.
[Illustration: FIG. 127]
The dark outside circle is the bark.
The rings within this are the wood. Each year one of these woody rings
is added to the tree, the last ring of all lying next to the bark; so,
if you count these, you can find out how many years the tree has lived.
In the center we see the soft stuff called pith.
What do these three divisions show?
The trunk of the palm in the next picture (Fig. 128) is like the stem
of the corn. The wood is not gathered in rings, but is scattered
through the soft part in thread-like bundles, so that we cannot tell
just the age of the tree.
[Illustration: FIG. 128]
And what else do you know about the palm?
Why, you know that it came into the world with but one seed leaf. If it
had had more than one, its stems would have had woody rings such as we
see in the fir.
In the schoolroom you cannot see palms and firs; but you can find a log
in a wood pile which will show you just such woody rings as prove that
the fir tree had more than one seed leaf.
And you can look at a stalk brought from the cornfield that will show
you how the trunk of the palm tells us that this tree began life with
only one seed leaf.
[Illustration: Decoration]
“WELL DONE, LITTLE STEM”
It is wonderful how much there is to learn about everything.
We began this book with an apple, and I had no more idea than you that
that apple was going to keep us busy for days.
And then the apple reminded us of its cousins, the pear and plum and
peach and cherry and rose. And if we had not stopped short, we should
have been introduced to so many more cousins that we should have had
neither room nor time for anything else.
From fruits we went to seeds.
At first it seemed almost as though we ought to finish up the seeds in
two or three readings; but this did not prove to be the case.
The mere naming of the different ways in which seeds went traveling,
covered so many pages that it was all we could do to find time to tell
how a few of the baby plants were cared for, and how they made their
way out of the seed shell into the world.
But when we came to roots, we felt there would be no temptation to
loiter by the way, for roots seemed rather dismal things to talk about.
Yet it took some little time to show the different uses of a root, and
to talk about air roots and water roots, as well as earth roots. It
was not altogether easy to make clear just how the little root hairs
keep acids on hand in which to melt the solid earth food which their
throats are too delicate to swallow. And it was quite a long story when
we came to the dodder, which roots in the stems of living plants, and
steals all its food from them; and to those orchids whose long roots
swing from tree branches and draw their nourishment from the air.
About stems, however, even I felt a little discouraged; for though it
is from the stem that all other parts of a plant grow, yet it is not
looked upon generally as an interesting object when studied by itself;
and I dare say you children still feel that stems are less amusing than
fruits, or seeds, or roots.
Still we can hardly help admiring the way in which a stem, when it lies
underground, like that of the lily or the Jack-in-the-pulpit, makes
its food so carefully all through the summer, and waits so patiently
through the long winter in order to help its plant to burst into
flower, and to ripen into fruit as soon as possible, and without more
labor and food hunting when the spring comes.
When a stem, like that of the morning-glory, sweeps slowly and
carefully through the air in search of something to lay hold of in its
efforts to climb upward, and when, on finding this support, it makes
such good use of it, we feel inclined to say, “Well done, little stem.”
And when a stem on land knows how to keep off meddlers, yet has the
wisdom not to take unnecessary trouble when afloat, like that of the
amphibious knotweed, then we feel that a plant gives its stem, as well
as its other parts, a large supply of common sense.
There is a great deal more that might be said on this subject. What
a plant lives on, what it eats and drinks and breathes, is very
interesting to learn about. And of course the food taken in by the
roots must be carried upward through the stem. But to write simply
about this is difficult. As much as I think most of you can understand,
I will tell you when we take up leaves.
PART IV—BUDS
[Illustration: Decoration]
BUDS IN WINTER
When school opened in September, all the trees were covered with
leaves; and some of these trees were bent with their burden of pears
and apples and peaches, while others were hung with prickly chestnut
burrs or with acorns or walnuts.
But now all is changed. The woods look gray and bare; for nearly
all the leaves have fallen save those of the oak, which are still
holding fast to the branches. These oak leaves are brown and stiff and
leathery. They crackle and rustle when the wind blows through them.
In the city squares you see the same change,—bare branches in place of
green leaves.
At this season it is hardly worth while, perhaps you think, to go to
the woods or to the park; for there is nothing to be seen,—no leaves,
no flowers, almost no fruits. Better wait till spring for any such
expedition.
Here you are wrong. Provided you know what to look at, and how to look
at it, there is no month of the year when the woods and parks are not
full of interest.
And so at this season, when the trees are bare of leaves, better than
at any other, certain things can be studied.
I have asked your teacher to bring to school to-day branches from the
different trees which are looking so cold and lonely. It is nearly
always possible to find the horse-chestnut, the maple, or the cherry;
and we will talk especially about these branches.
On your way to school, perhaps you pass every day a horse-chestnut
tree; but its branches are so far above your heads that you may never
have noticed that in winter the leafless twigs bear just such buds as
you see in the picture (Fig. 129), and on the branch which is before
you.
The largest bud grows on top. This is where the beautiful flower
cluster that comes out in May lies hidden.
The smaller buds that grow lower down the stem hold only leaves. You
see that these buds grow in pairs, one bud opposite another, and always
above a sort of scar on the twig. This scar was made last fall by the
breaking-off of a leaf.
Perhaps you fancy that these buds have only just made their appearance.
[Illustration: FIG. 129]
If you have any such idea as that, you are quite wrong. Last summer,
when the leaves were large and fresh, the little buds, that were not to
unfold for nearly a year, began to form, growing somewhat larger as the
weeks went by, and folding themselves tightly in the brown, leathery
wrappings that were to keep them safe from the cold of winter.
I should like you to pull off these wrappings, and see how well the
horse-chestnut tree defends from cold its baby leaves.
First you find about seven of these outside wrappings. The very outer
ones are thick and brown, and covered with the sticky stuff that makes
them proof against rain.
The next ones are brown and thick where their tips are exposed to the
air, while the inner ones are green and delicate. But altogether they
make a warm, snug covering for young leaves and flowers.
As for the baby leaves themselves, they are all done up in a furry
stuff that keeps them from catching cold, even if a gust of wind or a
few drops of rain should manage to make a way through the waterproof
and almost air-tight wrappings.
So you see that the leaves and branches and young flowers of a plant or
tree are looked after just as carefully as is the seed within the seed
case, or the baby plant in its seed shell.
[Illustration: Decoration]
A HAPPY SURPRISE
Here you see a branch from the red maple (Fig. 130).
On the flowering shoots three buds grow side by side. The middle,
smaller one holds the leaves. These leaves do not appear until the two
outer, larger buds have burst into flower clusters; for the flowers of
the red maple appear before its leaves.
[Illustration: FIG. 130]
I want you to bring to school as many different kinds of branches as
you can find, and I hope you will examine them all very carefully.
Notice the position of their buds, and whether these grow close
together or are scattered far apart, and whether one bud grows just
opposite another; and look for the marks left by the leaves which broke
off last fall.
When the buds are large enough, you will find it interesting to
pull them apart (but you must do this with great care) and see how
beautifully wrapped are the baby leaves and flowers.
I chose the branch of the horse-chestnut for special examination,
because its large buds show their contents plainly.
When a bud grows on the tip of a stem, its work is to carry on that
stem; but when it grows just above a leaf scar, you can be sure that it
is a young branch. Such a branch may bear either leaves or flowers, or
both.
But buds do not all grow up at the same time, or necessarily at all.
The strongest ones are the first to open. The others may keep quiet for
some time, not unfolding, perhaps, unless some of the earlier ones are
killed. In this case, the waiting buds try to fill the gap, and carry
on the good work of clothing the tree with leaves and flowers.
Sometimes they wait over till another year, and occasionally a bud
never opens at all.
You all enjoyed planting seeds, and watching them grow under your very
eyes.
Now I am going to propose to you a scheme which has given me quite as
much pleasure as my pot gardens.
When the buds on the winter branches have swelled the least little bit,
after a few warm days in February perhaps, go to the woods and cut
several branches in places where no one will miss them, and take them
home and put them in warm water, in a warm, bright corner, and see what
happens.
It will be a real joy to you, watching these little buds get bigger and
bigger, till the outer wrappings are forced apart, and either thrown
well aside, or pushed off altogether; and you will be filled with
delight when the delicate baby leaves begin to stretch themselves, or,
better still, when the pure, beautiful flowers burst from the brown,
dead-looking twigs.
Get branches of cherry, apple, peach, and pear; and bring in the pussy
willow, the maple, the _Forsythia_, the spicebush, and, if you can find
it, the mountain laurel; and if you do not pass many moments of almost
breathless pleasure watching the wonders these budding branches are so
eager to reveal, you are not the children I take you to be.
[Illustration: Decoration]
SOME ASTONISHING BUDS
There are some plants which do not put any winter wraps on their
delicate buds; and, strangely enough, these buds do not seem to suffer
for lack of clothing.
In a warm country this would not surprise us. If we were going to spend
the winter in the West Indies, we should not carry our furs with us,
for we should not meet any weather cold enough to make them necessary;
and so perhaps in the West Indies the buds have no more need of winter
clothing than we ourselves.
But if we were to spend the Christmas holidays somewhere in our
Northern mountains, if we were going for skating and coasting to the
Catskills or the Adirondacks, we should not fail to take with us our
warmest clothes.
And yet, if we walked in the Adirondack woods, we should meet over and
over again a shrub bearing naked buds, their folded, delicate leaves
quite exposed to the bitter cold.
This shrub is the hobblebush, the pretty flowers of which you see on p.
246.
I do not understand any better than you why this hobblebush does
not tuck away its baby leaves beneath a warm covering. Neither do I
understand how these naked leaves can live through the long, cold
winter. I should like very much to satisfy myself as to the reason
for this, for they do live and flourish; and I wish that such of you
children as know the home of the hobblebush (and it is common in many
places) would watch this shrub through the winter, and see if you can
discover how it can afford to take less care of its buds than other
plants.
There is one tree which seems to shield its buds more carefully in
summer than in winter. This tree is the buttonwood. It grows not only
in the country, but in many of our city streets and squares. You know
it by the way in which its bark peels in long strips from its trunk
and branches, and by the button-like balls which hang from the leafless
twigs all winter.
If you examine one of these twigs, now that they are bare of leaves,
you see the buds quite plainly; but if it is summer time, when the
leaves are clinging to the branch, you see no buds, and suppose that
they are not yet formed.
But here you are wrong.
“How can that be?” you ask. You looked carefully, and nowhere was there
any sign of a bud.
But you did _not_ look everywhere, after all.
If very carefully you had pulled off one of the leaves, you would have
found the young bud tucked safely away beneath the hollow end of the
leafstalk. This leafstalk fitted over it more neatly than a candle
snuffer over a candle (Fig. 131).
[Illustration: FIG. 131]
Try this for yourselves next summer. I think you will be pleased with
this pretty arrangement.
We learned that the potato, even though it is buried in the earth and
does not look like it, is really one of the thickened stems of the
potato plant.
The “eyes” of the potato look as little like buds as the potato itself
looks like a stem. Yet these “eyes” are true buds; for, if we leave
our potatoes in the dark cellar till spring, the “eyes” will send out
slender shoots in the same way that the buds on the branches of trees
send out young shoots.
As I told you before, the usual place for a bud is just between the
stem and the leafstalk, or the scar left by the leafstalk; but if a
stem is cut or wounded, oftentimes it sends out buds in other than the
usual places.
This habit accounts for the growth of young shoots from stumps of
trees, and from parts of the plant which ordinarily do not give birth
to buds.
Some buds never open while fastened to the stem of the parent plant;
but after a time they fall to the ground, strike root, and send up a
fresh young plant.
The tiger lily, the plant that grows so often in old gardens, bears
such buds as these. We call them “bulblets” when they act in this
strange fashion.
Perhaps even more surprising than this is the fact that leaves
sometimes produce buds.
[Illustration: FIG. 132]
In certain warmer countries grows a plant called the _Bryophyllum_. If
you look carefully at the thick, fleshy leaves of this plant, along its
notched edges you will see certain little dark spots; and if you cut
off one of these leaves and pin it on your window curtain, what do you
suppose will happen?
Well, right under your eyes will happen one of the strangest things I
have ever seen.
From the row of dark spots along the leaf’s edge, springs a row of
tiny, perfect plants (Fig. 132).
And when these tiny plants are fairly started, if you lay the leaf on
moist earth, they will send their roots into the ground, break away
from the fading leaf, and form a whole colony of new plants.
Now, those dark spots along the leaf’s edge were tiny buds; and the
thick leaf was so full of rich food, that when it was broken off from
the parent plant, and all of this food was forced into the buds, these
were strong enough to send out roots and leaves, and to set up in life
for themselves.
It will not be difficult for your teacher to secure some of these
leaves of the _Bryophyllum_, and to show you in the schoolroom this
strange performance.
All children enjoy wonderful tricks, and I know of nothing much
prettier or more astonishing than this trick of the _Bryophyllum_.
PART V—LEAVES
[Illustration: Decoration]
HOW TO LOOK AT A LEAF
To-day we begin to learn what we can about the leaves of plants. I hope
that enough fresh green leaves have been brought to school to allow
every child here to have one on the desk before him, so that he may
see, as far as is possible, just what is being talked about.
This picture (Fig. 133) shows you the leaf of the quince. Now, suppose
you held in your hand a leaf fresh from the quince tree, and were asked
to describe it to a blind person, how would you tell about it?
[Illustration: FIG. 133]
You would begin, I fancy, by saying, “This leaf is green,” for the
color of an object is one of the things we notice first.
Next perhaps you would describe its shape. “This quince leaf is
rounded, yet it is too long to be called a round leaf.” So you would
use the word “oblong.”
Like most leaves, then, it is green; and like some other leaves, it is
oblong.
Now look at this picture (Fig. 134) of the maple leaf. This, you see,
is not oblong, but three-pointed.
What other differences do you notice between these two leaves?
You do not seem quite sure as to whether there are any other
differences. But do you not notice that the edge of the maple leaf is
cut into little teeth, like the edge of a saw, while the edge of the
quince leaf is smooth?
And let me tell you here, that when I speak of a leaf, I speak not only
of the enlarged flat surface we call the “leaf blade,” but also of the
“leafstalk.” A leaf usually consists of a leafstalk and a leaf blade,
though some leaves are set so close to the stem that they have no room
for any stalks of their own.
[Illustration: FIG. 134]
“Oh! then,” you answer, “the leafstalk of the maple is much longer than
that of the quince, and there are little bits of leaves at the foot of
the quince leafstalk which the maple is without.”
You have done very well, and have noticed just those things which you
should.
The shape of the leaf blade, whether the edge of this is toothed, the
length of the leafstalk, and whether this has any little leaves at its
foot where it joins the stem, are things always worth noticing.
Now take your leaves and hold them up against the light, or else look
at the picture of the quince leaf, and study carefully the make-up of
the blade.
You see that this is divided lengthwise by a heavy rib which juts out
on the lower side. From this “midrib,” as it is called, run a great
many smaller lines. These are called “veins.” And from these branch off
still smaller veins that bear the name of “veinlets.” And somewhat as
the paper is stretched over the sticks of a kite, so from the leaf’s
midrib to its edge, and from vein to vein, is drawn the delicate green
material which makes up the greater part of the leaf.
What I wish you to learn this morning is, _how to look at a leaf_.
Before using our brains rightly, we must know how to use our eyes. If
we see a thing as it really is, the chances are that our thoughts about
it will be fairly correct.
But it is surprising how often our eyes _see wrong_.
If you doubt this, ask four or five of your playmates to describe the
same thing,—some street accident, or a quarrel in the playground, which
all have seen, or something of the sort,—and then I think you will
understand what I mean by saying that few people see correctly.
THE MOST WONDERFUL THING IN THE WORLD
It would be quite a simple matter to interest you children in plants
and their lives, if always it were possible to talk only about the
things which you can see with your own unaided eyes.
I think a bright child sees better than many a grown person, and I
think that it is easier to interest him in what he sees.
And then plants in themselves are so interesting and surprising, that
one must be stupid indeed if he or she finds it impossible to take
pleasure in watching their ways.
But about these plants there are many things which you cannot see
without the help of a microscope, and these things it is difficult to
describe in simple words. Yet it is necessary to learn about them if
you wish really to feel at home in this beautiful world of plants.
After all, whatever is worth having is worth taking some trouble for;
and nothing worth having can be had without trouble. So I hope when you
children come to parts of this book that seem at first a little dull,
you will say to yourselves, “Well, if we wish really to know plants, to
be able to tell their names, to understand their habits, we must try to
be a little patient when we come to the things that are difficult.”
For even in your games you boys have to use some patience; and you are
quite willing to run the risk of being hurt for the sake of a little
fun.
And you girls will take no end of trouble if you happen to be sewing
for your dolls, or playing at cooking over the kitchen stove, or doing
something to which you give the name “play” instead of “work.”
I only ask for just as much patience in your study of plants; and
I think I can safely promise you that plants will prove delightful
playthings long after you have put aside the games which please you now.
So we must begin to talk about some of the things which you are not
likely to see now with your own eyes, but which, when possible, I will
show you by means of pictures, and which, when you are older, some of
you may see with the help of a microscope.
Every living thing is made up of one or more little objects called
“cells.”
Usually a cell may be likened to a tiny bag which holds a bit of that
material which is the most wonderful thing in the whole world, for this
is the material which has _life_.
Occasionally a cell is nothing but a naked bit of this wonderful
substance, for it is not always held in a tiny bag.
[Illustration: FIG. 135]
This picture (Fig. 135) shows you a naked plant cell, much magnified,
that swims about in the water by means of the two long hairs which grow
from one end of the speck of life-giving material.
The next picture (Fig. 136) shows you a seed cut across, and so
magnified that you can see plainly its many cells.
In the middle portion of the seed the cells are six-sided, and laid
against one another in an orderly and beautiful fashion, while the
outer ones are mostly round.
All animals, we ourselves, all plants, began life as a single cell.
Sometimes a cell will spend its life alone. When the time comes for it
to add to the life of the world, it divides into two or more “daughter
cells,” as they are called. These break away from one another, and in
like manner divide again.
But usually the single cell which marks the beginning of a new life
adds to itself other cells; that is, the different cells do not break
away from one another, but all cling together, and so build up the
perfect plant or animal.
By just such additions the greatest tree in the forest grew from a
single tiny cell.
[Illustration: FIG. 136]
By just such additions you children have grown to be what you are, and
in the same way you will continue to grow.
Every living thing must eat and breathe, and so all living cells must
have food and air. These they take in through their delicate cell
walls. The power to do this comes from the bit of living substance
which lies within these walls.
This strange, wonderful material within the little cell is what is
alive in every man and woman, in every boy and girl, in every living
thing, whether plant or animal.
We know this much about it, and not the wisest man that ever lived
knows much more.
For though the wise men know just what things go to make up this
material, and though they themselves can put together these same
things, they can no more make life, or understand the making of it,
than can you or I.
But when we get a good hold of the idea that this material is contained
in all living things, then we begin to feel this; we begin to feel
that men and women, boys and girls, big animals and little insects,
trees and flowers, wayside weeds and grasses, the ferns and rushes of
the forest, the gray lichens of the cliffs and fences, the seaweeds
that sway in the green rock pools, and living things so tiny that our
eyes must fail to see them,—that all these are bound into one by the
tie of that strange and wonderful thing called life; that they are all
different expressions of one mysterious, magnificent idea.
While writing that last sentence, I almost forgot that I was writing
for boys and girls, or indeed for any one but myself; and I am afraid
that perhaps you have very little idea of what I am talking about.
But I will not cross it out. Why not, do you suppose?
Because I feel almost sure that here and there among you is a girl or
boy who will get just a little glimmering idea of what I mean; and
perhaps as the years go by, that glimmer will change into a light so
bright and clear as to become a help in dark places.
But the thought that I hope each one of you will carry home is
this,—that because this strange something found in your body is also
found in every other living thing, you may learn to feel that you are
in a way a sister or brother, not only to all other boys and girls, but
to all the animals and to every plant about you.
[Illustration: Decoration]
HOW A PLANT IS BUILT
Now we know that the plant, like yourself, began life as a single cell;
and we know that the perfect plant was built up by the power which this
cell had of giving birth to other cells with like power.
Suppose that a brick were laid upon the earth as the foundation of a
wall; and suppose that this brick were able to change into two bricks.
Suppose that the new brick were able to form another brick in the
same manner, and that this power should pass from brick to brick; and
suppose that all these bricks were able to arrange themselves one upon
another in an orderly fashion, so that they could not easily be moved
from their places.
Now, if you can see this brick wall growing up, you can see something
of how the cells of a plant grow up and arrange themselves.
But though it is fairly easy to see how the plant cells form one from
another, that does not explain how they come to make a plant, with its
many different parts, with its root and stem, its branches, leaves, and
flowers.
One thing can divide and make two things of the same sort; but it is
not easy to see how it can make things that are quite different from
itself.
Now, if this difficulty as to the building-up of plants and animals has
come into your minds, you are only puzzled by what has puzzled hundreds
of people before you; and all these hundreds of people have found the
puzzle quite as impossible to solve as the king’s horses and the king’s
men found it impossible to put Humpty Dumpty together again.
A good many questions that we cannot answer come into our minds; but if
we look honestly for the answers and do not find them, then we can be
pretty sure that for the present it is safe to leave them unanswered.
As cell is added to cell in the building-up of plant life, some
wonderful power forces each new cell to do the special work which is
most needed by the growing plant.
Sometimes this new cell is needed to help do the work of a root, and so
it begins to do this work, and becomes part of the root; or else it is
needed to do stem work, and goes to make up the stem, or leaf work, and
is turned over into the leaf.
A healthy cell is born with the power to do whatever is most needed.
[Illustration: Decoration]
HOW A PLANT’S FOOD IS COOKED
Some time ago we learned that the little root hairs, by means of their
acid, are able to make a sort of broth from the earthy materials which
they could not swallow in a solid state.
But before this broth is really quite fit for plant food, it needs even
more preparation.
Why do we eat and drink, do you suppose?
“Because we are hungry.” That is the direct reason, of course. But we
are made hungry so that we shall be forced to eat; for when we eat, we
take into our bodies the material that is needed to build them up,—to
feed the cells which make the flesh and bone and muscle.
And this is just why the plant eats and drinks. It needs constantly
fresh nourishment for its little cells, so that these can live, and
grow strong enough to make the new cells which go to form, not bone and
flesh and muscle, as with you children, but fresh roots and stem and
leaves and flowers and fruits.
If these little cells were not fed, they would die, and the plant would
cease to live also.
And now what do you think happens to the broth that has been taken in
from the earth by the root hairs?
As we have said, this broth needs a little more preparation before it
is quite fit for plant food. What it really wants is some _cooking_.
Perhaps you can guess that the great fire before which all plant food
is cooked is the sun.
But how are the hot rays of the sun to pierce the earth, and reach the
broth which is buried in the plant’s root?
Of course, if it remains in the root, the earth broth will not get the
needed cooking. It must be carried to some more get-at-able position.
Now, what part of a plant is usually best fitted to receive the sun’s
rays?
Its leaves, to be sure. The thin, flat leaf blades are spread out on
all sides, so that they fairly bathe themselves in sunshine.
So if the broth is to be cooked in the sun, up to the leaves it must be
carried.
And how is this managed? Water does not run uphill, as you know. Yet
this watery broth must mount the stem before it can enter the leaves.
Water does not run uphill ordinarily, it is true; yet, if you dip a
towel in a basin of water, the water rises along the threads, and the
towel is wet far above the level of the basin.
And if you dip the lower end of a lump of sugar in a cup of coffee, the
coffee rises in the lump, and stains it brown.
And the oil in the lamp mounts high into the wick.
Perhaps when you are older you will be able somewhat to understand
the reason of this rise of liquid in the towel, in the lump of sugar,
in the lamp wick. The same reason accounts partly for the rise of the
broth in the stem. But it is thought that the force which sends the
oil up the wick would not send the water far up the stem. And you know
that some stems are very tall indeed. The distance, for example, to
be traveled by water or broth which is sucked in by the roots of an
oak tree, and which must reach the top-most leaves of the oak, is very
great.
Yet the earth broth seems to have no difficulty in making this long,
steep climb.
Now, even wise men have to do some guessing about this matter, and I
fear you will find it a little hard to understand.
But it is believed that the roots drink in the earth broth so eagerly
and so quickly, that before they know it they are full to overflowing.
It is easier, however, to enter a root than it is to leave it by the
same door; and the result is, that the broth is forced upward into the
stem by the pressure of more water or broth behind.
Of course, if the stem and branches and leaves above are already full
of liquid, unless they have some way of disposing of the supply on
hand, they cannot take in any more; and the roots below would then be
forced to stop drinking, for when a thing is already quite full to
overflowing, it cannot be made to hold more.
But leaves have a habit of getting rid of what they do not need. When
the watery broth is cooked in the sun, the heat of the sun’s rays
causes the water to pass off through the little leaf mouths. Thus the
broth is made fit for plant food, and at the same time room is provided
for fresh supplies from the root.
If you should examine the lower side of a leaf through a microscope,
you would find hundreds and thousands of tiny mouths, looking like the
little mouths in this picture (Fig. 137).
[Illustration: FIG. 137]
Some of the water from the earth broth is constantly passing through
these mouths out of the plant, into the air.
A STEEP CLIMB
It is all very well, you may think, to say that the pressure from the
root sends the water up through the stem; but when we cut across such a
stem as a tree trunk, one finds it full of wood, with a little tightly
packed soft stuff in the center, and not hollow like a water pipe, as
one would suppose from all that has been said about the way the water
rises in the stem.
No, a stem is not a hollow pipe, or even a bunch of hollow pipes, it is
true; and it does seem something of a question, how the water can force
its way through all this wood; and even if one hears how it is done,
it is not an easy thing to make clear either to grown people or to
children. But I will see what I can do; and I know that you really love
these plants and trees, and will try to be a little patient with them
and with me.
The water, or liquid, when it mounts a stem or tree trunk, takes a path
that leads through the new-made cells. Each young cell wall is made of
such delicate material that it allows the water, or broth, to filter
through it, just as it would pass through a piece of thin cloth. And so
it makes its way from cell to cell, along the stem, more slowly than
if it were passing through a hollow tube, but almost as surely. It is
true, the earth broth does not reach the leaves above without having
given up something to the little cells along the road. These seem to
lay hold of what they specially need for their support, while the rest
is allowed to pass on.
I want your teacher to prove to you by a little experiment that water
makes its way up a stem.
If she will place in colored water the stem of a large white tulip,
cutting off its lower end under the liquid, those parts whose little
cells are in closest connection with the stem will soon begin to change
color, taking the red or blue of the water; for a freshly cut stem has
the same power as the root to suck in water eagerly and quickly.
[Illustration: Decoration]
HOW A PLANT PERSPIRES
We cannot see the water as it passes from the tiny leaf mouths into the
air. Neither can we see the water that is being constantly carried from
the surface of our bodies into the air. But if we breathe against a
window pane, the scattered water in our breath is collected by the cold
of the glass in a little cloud; and if we place the warm palms of our
hands against this window pane, in the same way the cold collects the
water that is passing from the little mouths in our skin, and shows it
to us as a cloud on the glass.
Heat scatters water so that we cannot see it, any more than we can see
the lump of sugar when its little grains are scattered in hot water;
but cold gathers together the water drops so that we are able to see
them.
This is why you can “see your breath,” as you say, on a cold day. The
cold outside air gathers together the water which was scattered by the
heat of your body.
If you place against the window pane the under side of the leaves of a
growing plant, the water passing from the tiny leaf mouths collects on
the glass in just such a damp cloud as is made by the moist palms of
your warm hands.
When water passes from your hands, you say that you are perspiring;
and when water passes away from the plant, we can say that the plant
perspires. Some plants perspire more freely than others. A sunflower
plant has been known to give off more than three tumblers of water a
day by this act of perspiration.
There is a tree, called the _Eucalyptus_, whose leaves perspire so
freely that it is planted in swampy places in order to drain away the
water.
Of course, the more quickly the leaves throw off water, the faster the
fresh supply pushes up the stem.
If the leaves do their work more quickly than the roots make good the
loss, then the plant wilts.
When a leaf is broken from a plant, it soon fades. Its water supply
being cut off, it has no way of making good the loss through the leaf
mouths.
Just as the air in a balloon keeps its walls firm, so the water in the
leaf cells keeps the cell walls firm.
As a balloon collapses if you prick it with a pin, and let out the air,
so the cell walls collapse when the cells lose their water; and when
the cell walls of a leaf collapse, the leaf itself collapses.
[Illustration: Decoration]
HOW A PLANT STORES ITS FOOD
We see that the water is drawn away from the earth broth into the air
by the heat of the sun, just as water is drawn from the broth we place
on the stove by the heat of the fire; and that when this has happened,
the plant’s food is cooked, and is in condition to be eaten.
But this broth does not lose all its water. There is still enough left
to carry it back through the leaf into the branches and stem, and even
down into the root once more.
In fact, the prepared food is now sent to just those parts of the plant
which most need it.
Perhaps it is laid up beneath the bark, to help make new buds which
will burst into leaf and flower another year.
Or perhaps it goes down to help the roots put out new branches and
fresh root hairs.
Or possibly it is stowed away in such an underground stem as that of
the lily, or the crocus bulb, and is saved for next year’s food. Once
in a while some of this prepared food is stored in the leaf itself.
When a leaf is thick and juicy (“fleshy,” the books call it), we can
guess that it is full of plant food.
Do you recall the _Bryophyllum_,—the plant we talked about a few days
ago? Its wonderful leaves, you remember, gave birth to a whole colony
of new plants.
You may be sure that these leaves had refused to give up all the food
sent to them for cooking in the sun. You can guess this from their
thick, fleshy look, and you can be sure of this when you see the baby
plants spring from their edges; for without plenty of nourishment
stored away, these leaves could never manage to support such a quantity
of young ones.
LEAF GREEN AND SUNBEAM
But the earth broth which the roots supply is not the only article of
importance in the plant’s bill of fare.
The air about us holds one thing that every plant needs as food.
This air is a mixture of several things. Just as the tea we drink is a
mixture of tea and water, and milk and sugar, so the air is a mixture
of oxygen and nitrogen, and water and carbonic-acid gas.
Oxygen, nitrogen, and carbonic-acid gas,—each one of these three things
that help to make the air is what we call a gas, and one of these gases
is made of two things. Carbonic-acid gas is made of oxygen and carbon.
Now, carbon is the food which is needed by every plant. But the carbon
in the air is held tightly in the grasp of the oxygen, with which it
makes the gas called carbonic-acid gas.
To get possession of this carbon, the plant must contrive to break up
the gas, and then to seize and keep by force the carbon.
This seems like a rather difficult performance, does it not? For when a
gas is made of two different things, you can be pretty sure that these
keep a firm hold on each other, and that it is not altogether easy to
tear them apart.
Now, how does the plant meet this difficulty?
You cannot guess by yourselves how this is done, so I must tell you the
whole story.
Certain cells in the plant are trained from birth for this special
work,—the work of getting possession of the carbon needed for plant
food. These little cells take in the carbonic-acid gas from the air;
then they break it up, tearing the carbon from the close embrace of the
oxygen, pushing the oxygen back into the air it came from, and turning
the carbon over to the plant to be stored away till needed as food.
Only certain cells can do this special piece of work. Only the cells
which hold the green substance that colors the leaf can tear apart
carbonic-acid gas. Every little cell which holds a bit of this leaf
green devotes itself to separating the carbon from the oxygen.
Why this special power lies in a tiny speck of leaf green we do not
know. We only know that a cell without such an occupant is quite unable
to break up carbonic-acid gas.
But even the bit of leaf green in a tiny cell needs some help in its
task. What aid does it call in, do you suppose, when it works to wrench
apart the gas?
In this work the partner of the bit of leaf green is nothing more or
less than a sunbeam. Without the aid of a sunbeam, the imprisoned leaf
green is as helpless to steal the carbon as you or I would be.
It sounds a good deal like a fairy story, does it not,—this story of
Leaf Green and Sunbeam?
Charcoal is made of carbon. About one half of every plant is carbon.
The coal we burn in our fireplaces is the carbon left upon the earth
by plants that lived and died thousands of years ago. It is the carbon
that Leaf Green and Sunbeam together stole from the air, and turned
over into the plant.
If one looks at a piece of coal with the eyes which one keeps for the
little picture gallery all children carry in their heads, one sees more
than just a shining, black lump. One sees a plant that grew upon the
earth thousands of years ago, with its bright green leaves dancing in
the sunlight; for without those green leaves and that sunlight, there
could be no coal for burning to-day. And when we light our coal fire,
what we really do is to set free the sunbeams that worked their way so
long ago into the plant cells.
It is more like a fairy story than ever. Sunbeam is the noble knight
who fought his way into the cell where Leaf Green lay imprisoned,
doomed to perform a task which was beyond her power. But with the aid
of the noble Sunbeam, she did this piece of work, and then both fell
asleep, and slept for a thousand years. Awakening at last, together
they made their joyful escape in the flame that leaps from out the
black coal.
In truth, a sunbeam and a flame are not so unlike as to make this story
as improbable as many others that we read.
And because I have told it to you in the shape of a fairy story, you
must not think it is not true. It is indeed true. Everywhere in the
sunshiny woods and fields of summer, the story of Leaf Green and
Sunbeam is being lived. But when the day is cloudy or the sun sets,
then there is no Sunbeam to help the Princess, and then no carbon is
stolen from the air.
PLANT OR ANIMAL?
Did you ever stop to ask yourself, “What is the difference between a
plant and an animal?” because this is the place where that question
should be answered.
“Why, an animal is _altogether_ different from a plant,” you answer,
perhaps a little scornfully. “I have no trouble in telling which is
which.”
It is very natural that you should feel this way. A cow or a horse, for
example, is not at all like a tree; and when you think of animals, you
think of the ones you know best, and likewise of plants.
But wise men have discovered plants that look and act so much like
animals, and animals that look and act so much like plants, that at one
time they say, “Now, these are animals, surely,” and a little later
exclaim, “No, after all, these are plants;” and they take a long time
to make up their minds as to whether certain objects are plants or
animals.
And already even you children have discovered that the plants you know
best belong to families, and have children, and care for them in a very
motherly fashion; that they drink earth food with their roots, and eat
carbon food with their leaves; and soon you will find that they do many
other things which once upon a time you would have thought it a great
joke to be told a plant could do.
You remember my telling you of one little plant cell that could swim;
and there are some animals, you know, that are rooted to one spot as
we usually think only a plant is rooted.
What, then, _is_ the difference between a plant and an animal?
Leaf Green and Sunbeam between them put life into what had no life
before; and the living plant matter, which they help to make, is that
which animals cannot make themselves, yet which they cannot live
without, for this living matter is absolutely necessary to them as food.
And the one real difference between a plant and an animal is this,—a
plant can make out of certain dead substances the living matter that
all animals must have for food; an animal cannot do this.
HOW WE ARE HELPED BY LEAF GREEN AND SUNBEAM
The cell in which Leaf Green lives has no little mouths such as we saw
in the picture some time ago.
Its walls are so delicate that the carbonic-acid gas passes through
them quite easily,—as easily as the gas escaping from an unlighted jet
in the schoolroom could pass to your nose even if you wore a veil, or
as easily as water would pass through a piece of muslin.
But between Leaf Green’s cell and the outer air are other cells,—those
which make up the outer covering or skin of the leaf. These are
arranged so as to form the openings or mouths about which we have read.
By means of these mouths the gas makes its way through the leaf’s thick
skin.
The plant needs as food the carbon in this gas, and so keeps fast hold
of it; but the oxygen is not needed for this purpose, and so it is
pushed back into the air.
Now, we learned in the last chapter of one very great service rendered
to animals by plants. We learned that plants took carbon from the air,
and turned this into food for animals.
But there is still another way in which plants serve animals. And
once more it is the work of Leaf Green and Sunbeam that is of such
importance to us; for when they take hold of the carbon, making it into
living food for man and beast, they take from the air the gas that
is poisonous, and send back into the air the gas which gives life and
health.
This poisonous gas which they lay hold of, you remember, is
carbonic-acid gas; and carbonic-acid gas is what we animals send out
of our bodies with every breath, for it is the part of the air which
poisons us. When the schoolroom is so close that our heads ache, it is
because so many children have been breathing out this gas, and we are
forced to take it back into our bodies again.
But when this gas is stolen by the plant, and robbed of its carbon, it
is no longer carbonic-acid gas. Nothing of it is left but the oxygen
which is pushed out through the cell walls; and this oxygen is as good
to breathe as the other gas (carbon and oxygen mixed) is bad.
So the plant finds good what we find poisonous. It takes in and keeps
that which hurts us (the carbon), and sends out that which helps us
(the oxygen).
So you see that our lives depend on the lives of plants in two ways:—
1. The plants give us the food we need for life.
2. The plants take from the air the gas that poisons us, and give to
the air the gas which we need for life and health.
And in both cases it is Leaf Green and Sunbeam who are making life
possible for us.
Remember the great services of these two fairies when next you pass a
green tree which is bathing itself in sunshine.
HOW A PLANT BREATHES
Perhaps you have heard people say that it is not good to sleep in a
room with plants.
They say this, because they have heard that at night the plant does not
give out oxygen, but that it does give out the poisonous carbonic-acid
gas.
Now, you children know that part of this statement is true.
You know that the plant cannot give out oxygen at night, because at
that time there is no Sunbeam about to help Leaf Green tear apart
carbonic-acid gas and send the oxygen back into the air.
But how about the other part of the statement?
Is it true that at night plants give out the poisonous carbonic-acid
gas?
Both day and night, plants give out carbonic-acid gas; for though
plants, save in the sunlight, cannot eat by means of their little green
cells, they can breathe through the tiny mouths (Fig. 137) on the under
side of the leaf by night as well as by day.
And when either a plant or an animal breathes, it takes the life-giving
oxygen from out the air mixture, and keeps it for its own use. But
poisonous carbonic-acid gas is sent back into the air. Now, the
question is, whether a plant does most good or most harm to the air by
taking in and sending out the different gases.
Of course, it does good when it lets the oxygen out through its cell
walls, and stores away the carbon within itself; and it may seem to do
harm when through its leaf mouths it breathes in oxygen and breathes
out carbonic-acid gas.
There is only one key to unlock the matter, and that is this,—to find
out whether the plant does most towards poisoning or towards purifying
the air.
And that has been found out already.
Wise men say that Leaf Green and Sunbeam do much more good to the air
than the little breathing mouths do harm. The two good fairies take
away a great deal of poison, and send back a great deal of the helpful
oxygen; while the tiny mouths neither rob the air of much oxygen nor
give it much poison. Indeed, the harm they do is so small compared with
the great good accomplished by Leaf Green and Sunbeam, that even at
night you need not worry at the thought that you have plants in your
room.
Perhaps you wonder that a plant does these two things that are so
exactly opposite to each other.
But a plant must breathe as well as eat; for when it breathes, it takes
in the precious oxygen which is just as necessary to its life as to
ours.
In summer, by the dusty roadside, you see plants almost white with
dust, looking quite ill and lifeless.
And they are both ill and lifeless; for their little leaf throats are
so choked that they cannot breathe in the oxygen they need, and in
consequence they are being slowly suffocated.
THE DILIGENT TREE
Now we have learned three things about plants, and especially about
leaves. We have learned—
1. That they perspire.
2. That they eat and drink.
3. That they breathe.
They perspire when the water passes through the leaf mouths into the
air.
They eat when Leaf Green and Sunbeam together manage to take the carbon
out of the carbonic-acid gas which has made its entrance through the
leaf mouth and the cell wall. They drink when the roots suck in water
and earth broth.
They breathe when the leaf mouths take from the air the oxygen, and
give back to it carbonic-acid gas.
The veins and veinlets, of which you see so many running through a
leaf, act in something the same way as the water pipes of a city; for
through these veins the watery food, the earth broth, is carried to the
different cells.
When one knows all that we know even now about a plant, one looks at a
tree covered with leaves with a good deal of admiration.
Just think of what is being done inside that quiet-looking tree! Think
of the millions of cells that go to make it up, each cell having its
own work to do! Think of the immense amount of business being carried
on within the trunk, inside the branches, and especially in each green
leaf! And when you have the chance, notice how hard each leaf tries to
get just as much sun and air as it possibly can.
In the first place, the thin, flat leaf blades are so spread out that
every part is exposed to the light and air.
Then notice how the leaves are placed in reference to one another.
Almost every single one is fastened to the tree so as to get its fair
share of sunshine.
When you think of the many thousands of leaves borne by one tree, it
astonishes you to see how seldom one leaf gets in another’s light.
And the shapes of leaves are always suited to their arrangement on the
tree.
If you should take the leaves of a chestnut tree and replace them by
the leaves of a maple, you would find the maple leaves all getting in
each other’s way, or else you would see that they were taking up a
great deal more room than necessary.
But when a leaf is studied on its own tree, one sees that its shape is
the very best that could be imagined for its position.
And in the smaller plants we notice this same thing.
And when you remember that Leaf Green cannot feed the plant unless
Sunbeam comes to her assistance, you realize how necessary it is that
each leaf be within the reach of Sunbeam’s visits.
LEAVES AND ROOTS
You will be surprised to learn that the way in which a plant’s leaves
grow tells us something of the way in which its roots grow.
Many of you have been overtaken far from home in a rainstorm, and have
sought shelter under a spreading tree. The ground directly beneath the
tree has kept almost dry even after some hours of rain, but the earth
just under the tips of the spreading branches got very wet: for the
great tree acted like a large umbrella; and when the raindrops fell
upon the smooth leaves, which sloped outward and downward, they rolled
from leaf to leaf till they reached the very lowest, outermost leaves
of all. From these they fell to the ground, just as the drops that
gather upon your umbrella run outward and downward to the umbrella’s
edge, and then off upon the ground.
So you can see that the circle of earth which marks the spread of the
branches above must be specially wet, as it received a great part of
the rain which fell upon the whole tree.
And whenever you see a tree which sheds the rain water in such a
circle, you can be pretty sure that, if you should dig into the earth a
ditch which followed this circle, you would soon reach the tips of the
new root branches of the tree.
You know that the root does the drinking for the plant; and only the
newest parts of the root, the fresh root tips, are really good for work
of this sort. You remember that the earth food is carried up the stem
to the leaves in a watery broth; and that if the water supply should
give out, the new plant cells would not get the broth which helps them
to grow, and to put out other cells, and so to build up the plant.
Now, as only the new root branches, near their tips, are able to
drink, if the water should leak through the earth in equal quantities
everywhere, much of it would be wasted; but when this water is
collected in certain spots within reach of the new root branches, there
is good reason to believe that these will be able to satisfy their
thirst.
By the shedding of the rain from the tips of the spreading branches
above, the water is collected in a ring, and so sinks into the earth;
and the root branches below spread out in just the same direction as
the tree branches above, till they find what they need, and drink their
fill.
[Illustration: FIG. 138]
So by the way in which a tree sheds the rain, you can tell just where
its root branches reach out underground.
In smaller plants you see much the same thing. Fig. 138 shows a plant
called the _Caladium_. You can see that the raindrops must roll outward
down these leaves, and fall upon the earth just above the tips of the
root branches.
Fig. 139 shows you the rhubarb plant. This has quite a different sort
of root. Now, if the rhubarb leaves were like those of the _Caladium_,
unless the rhubarb root-branches changed their direction, these
root-branches would grow very thirsty indeed.
[Illustration: FIG. 139]
But as it is, the water pours down these leaves toward the center of
the plant, and reaches the ground almost directly over the straight,
fleshy root, with its downward-growing branches; and we see that these
root-branches are watered by the leaves above just as carefully as are
those of the _Caladium_.
By knowing one thing about a plant, often you can guess that another
thing is so.
You understand now that when the leaves of a plant shed rain water
after the fashion of the _Caladium_, the chances are that its
root-branches spread out as far as the drip of the water; and that the
root of the rhubarb points almost straight downward, is told you by the
drip of water from the rhubarb leaves.
LEAF VEINS
Some time ago you learned that from the stem of a plant you could guess
the number of seed leaves which it brought into the world, and that in
the same way from the seed leaves you could guess what kind of a stem
it would build up.
From the way in which a leaf is veined you can guess both of these
things. You can guess what sort of a stem belongs to the plant, and
with how many seed leaves it began life.
When the little veins run in and out, forming a sort of network, we say
that the leaf is “net-veined.”
[Illustration: FIG. 140]
[Illustration: FIG. 141]
[Illustration: FIG. 142]
These leaves of the quince (Fig. 140), the maple (Fig. 141), and the
basswood (Fig. 142) are all net-veined.
Net-veined leaves are borne by plants which brought into the world more
than one seed leaf; and with the net-veined leaf we can expect to find
that stem which comes with more than one seed leaf,—a stem where the
skin or bark, the woody rings, and the soft central pith, are clearly
separated one from another.
[Illustration: FIG. 143]
[Illustration: FIG. 144]
But a leaf such as that in Fig. 143 or that in Fig. 144, where the
veins do not branch off in a network, but run in unbroken lines side by
side,—such leaves as these tell you that they are borne by plants which
started life with only one seed leaf, and which have such a stem as the
cornstalk, where you see no woody rings or central pith.
These leaves are called “parallel-veined.”
I fear that you find all this a little difficult to understand and to
remember; but if you read it patiently, when you study the botany for
older children, I think it will come back to you and make your lessons
easier.
[Illustration: Decoration]
LEAF SHAPES
As I told you before, we should notice always the shape of a leaf.
[Illustration: Leaves]
It is much easier to describe some new plant we have met on our walks
if we remember the shape of its leaves.
Next summer I hope you will make a collection of leaves, pressing and
keeping them. I think you will be amazed at their great variety in
shape.
[Illustration: FIG. 145]
[Illustration: FIG. 146]
Some you find long and narrow, others almost round. Some are
arrow-shaped, others star-shaped, others needle-shaped (Fig. 145). Some
are three-pointed like the maple leaf (Fig. 146); others deeply-parted,
like the oak leaf (Fig. 147).
Sometimes a large leaf is cut up into several little leaves. These
little leaves are called “leaflets.”
[Illustration: FIG. 147]
[Illustration: FIG. 148]
The clover leaf (Fig. 148) has three leaflets.
[Illustration: FIG. 149]
The locust leaf (Fig. 149) is cut into a great many leaflets.
The edge of one leaf (Fig. 150) is smooth, while that of another is cut
into little teeth (Fig. 151) like the teeth of a saw.
[Illustration: FIG. 150]
[Illustration: FIG. 151]
I should like to know how many of you children, without looking even at
a picture save such as you carry in that little gallery in your head,
could describe correctly the shapes of some of our common leaves. I
should like to ask you to draw on the blackboard the rough outlines of
any leaves that you remember. If you think you could not do this, will
you not try, when next you see a leaf, to carry off in your mind such
a picture of it as to enable you to outline it on the blackboard when
you go back to the school room?
Really it does not take any more time to see a thing correctly than to
see it incorrectly. It takes a little more sense, that is all.
It takes some sense to give even one minute of honest thought to the
thing you are looking at.
You know some children who never seem to have all their thoughts in one
place at a time, and who in consequence never see anything really well.
It is better to stop doing a thing altogether than to do it in a
foolish sort of way; and it is foolish to start to do even the smallest
thing, and yet not do it.
The child who looks at even a leaf in a way to make it possible for
him to draw the outline of that leaf five minutes later, is likely to
be the child who goes in for both work and play with all his heart,
and who comes out as far ahead on the playground as he does in the
schoolroom.
Now, after that lecture, which some of you need badly enough (and which
I will tell you, as a great secret, I need not a little myself), I want
to point out a few more of the things that are worth noticing in a leaf.
But perhaps it is better to save them for another chapter.
HAIRY LEAVES
Notice always whether a leaf is smooth or hairy. Do you remember the
mullein that sends up its tall spires over the hill pasture? The
grayish leaves of this mullein are so hairy that they feel almost like
wool. What is the use of all this hair? It is not likely that a plant
would wrap itself in this hairy coat except for some good reason.
It is believed that this coating of the mullein prevents animals from
eating the leaves, and so destroying the plant. In the mouth, these
hairs slip from the leaf blade, and cause a most unpleasant sensation.
But usually the hairs on a leaf are helpful because they prevent too
much perspiration or giving-off of water. The more freely the hot sun
beats upon a leaf, the more quickly the water is drawn away from it.
You can see just how this is by hanging a wet towel in front of the
fire. In a very short time the heat from the burning coals draws the
water from the towel. But put a screen between the fire and the towel,
and the water passes off more slowly.
Now, the hairs on that side of the leaf which faces the sun act as a
screen from its fierce heat. We have learned how important it is that
the leaf should not part with its water more quickly than the roots can
make up the loss. We know that when a leaf does this, it wilts just as
a leaf wilts when it is picked and cut off from its water supply, on
account of the collapse of the walls of the many little cells which are
emptied of water.
So you can understand that plants which grow in dry, sunny places,
where there is little drinking water for the roots, and where the sun
beats constantly on the leaves, must take every care that there is no
waste of water.
And if you keep your eyes open, you will discover that many of the
plants which grow in such places screen themselves from the full heat
of the sun by a coat of hairs.
The plant called “life everlasting” is one which grows in dry, open,
sunny places. It clothes its leaves with silky hairs, and so prevents
them from throwing off too quickly the small amount of water its roots
are able to provide. Without this silky coat, the sun would suck its
leaves quite dry of water.
Sometimes a leaf has only a few of the little leaf mouths through which
most of the water passes. As these mouths are wide open only in the
sunlight, and as often the rest of the leaf is covered with a thick
skin which prevents the water from slipping away (as a little of it
nearly always does) through the cell walls, such a leaf will hold its
water supply and keep fresh for a long time. Such leaves as these we
find on what we call “evergreen” plants. The pines and hemlocks which
light up the woods all winter have these thick-skinned, few-mouthed
leaves, which throw off so little water that even when the ground is
frozen hard, and gives no drinking water to the roots, they are able to
keep fresh by the careful way in which each one hoards its own little
supply.
WOOLLY AND “DUSTY” LEAVES
Curiously enough, some plants put on a hairy coat for just the opposite
reason from the one which makes life everlasting clothe itself in that
fashion. Life everlasting fears lest its leaves throw off their water,
or perspire too quickly.
Down by the stream that runs through the meadow grow great clusters of
the pink-flowered steeple bush. If you look at the lower sides of the
leaves of the steeple bush, you see that they are very woolly. As this
wool is not between the sun and the leaf blade, it cannot be meant to
protect the leaves from the heat of the sun; and indeed in this wet
meadow, close to the river, never mind how quickly the leaves throw
off their water, the roots can have no difficulty in finding close by
more than enough to make good the loss. No, the fact is that these
leaves need to throw off water very freely indeed to make room for
the ever-fresh supply that is pushing up the stem, and their woolly
covering is intended to help them do this very thing. Its object is
to aid perspiration. In swampy places the moisture rises every night
from the wet ground, and settles on the plants about. The little mouths
on the under surfaces of the leaves of the steeple bush would soon be
clogged with the moisture rising from below, if they were not protected
in some way; and if they became so clogged, they could not throw off
the water with which the whole plant is charged. Thus, by having this
thick coat of hair, the water that otherwise would cling to the outer
surface of the leaf blade is kept at a distance from the little mouths,
and these are not interrupted in the performance of a duty so necessary
to the health of the plant.
This same habit of coating its lower leaf surfaces with hair, you
notice in the speckled or swamp alder, a shrub which grows also in wet
places, and therefore runs the same risk of having its leaf mouths
clogged with water.
So when you see only the upper surface of a leaf covered with hair,
you can guess that the object of the plant is to prevent too much
perspiration; but when you see only its lower side clothed in this same
way, you can guess that the plant fears too little perspiration.
Sometimes you find a plant with leaves which have a coating of what
looks almost like dust on one or both of their surfaces. This dust we
call “bloom.” We see it in apples and grapes, as well as on leaves. It
is made up of a waxy material which is put forth by the plant just as
it puts forth hair. This bloom the plant uses also as a help to free
perspiration. By thus clothing its leaves it shields the little mouths
from water clogging; and so you can be sure that the little mouths have
not been filled with water, and thus prevented from doing their work.
The cabbage leaf has mouths on both of its surfaces, and so both sides
are covered with this protecting bloom. If you dip a cabbage leaf in
water and then shake it, the drops roll off and leave it quite dry.
PRICKLES AND POISON
Leaves need to protect themselves from other enemies than too great
heat and too much water.
We found that the prickly armor of the thistle enabled it to live in
pastures where the cattle had killed most of the other plants.
Many animals like to eat green leaves, so we are not surprised to find
that plants invent different ways of protecting themselves.
One look at the leaf of the thistle is enough to persuade us that it
would not be very good eating.
[Illustration: Prickers]
The red-berried holly, with which we decorate our churches and houses
at Christmas time, is another plant with prickly leaves.
Some plants cover their leaves with bristles, which the cattle dread
almost as much as the stout prickles.
As we read before, the mullein defends its leaves by a fuzzy coat of
hair. Such an armor as this is less warlike than that of the thistle,
but quite as effective.
Other plants fill their leaves with juices which are either poisonous
or unpleasant.
It seems as if animals guessed the presence of these unfriendly juices
by the plant’s smell, for they will munch the different growing things
all about such a plant as this, and leave the harmful leaves severely
alone.
The nettles cover their leaves with stinging hairs. These stiff hairs
break off when handled, burying themselves in the flesh, and sending
out a burning acid that punishes severely the meddler, man or beast, as
it may happen to be.
By this time I think you realize that leaves are well worth noticing.
And when you have looked at a leaf so fully as to be able to carry in
your mind its outline, I hope you will then discover whether it wears
a coat of hair, or a dusty bloom, or a prickly armor, or a thick,
evergreen skin, and that you will decide what enemies it is trying to
escape.
[Illustration: Decoration]
SOME CRUEL TRAPS
Have you ever seen a leaf like the one in this picture (Fig. 152)?
It is shaped something like a pitcher; and the plant on which it grows
has been named the “pitcher plant.”
The pitcher plant lives in low, wet place, such as the shaded swamp, or
the marsh down by the lake.
On account of its curious leaves it is brought to the cities, and is
sold on the street corners or at the florists’.
In June comes the great flower of the pitcher plant. Sometimes this is
a dull red; again it is a delicate pink or perhaps a light green; and
it has faint, pleasant fragrance.
[Illustration: FIG. 152]
Next June I hope that some of you children will find these beautiful
flowers and these curious leaves.
Why should a leaf be shaped like a pitcher, do you suppose?
These leaves are not only pitcher-like in shape, but also in their
way of holding water; for if you succeed in discovering a settlement
of pitcher plants, you will find that nearly every pitcher is partly
filled with rain water. Usually this water is far from clear. It
appears to hold the remains of drowned insects; and sometimes the
odor arising from a collection of these pitcher plants is not exactly
pleasant.
Perhaps you wonder how it happens that dead insects are found in every
one of these pitchers; and possibly you will be surprised to learn that
apparently these curious leaves are built for the express purpose of
capturing insects.
It is easy to understand that these odd leaves are not so well fitted
as more simple ones to cook the plant’s food in the sun, or to take
carbon from the air; but if they are unfitted to provide and prepare
ordinary food, possibly they are designed to secure food that is
extraordinary.
It seems likely that the pitcher plant is not content to live, like
other plants, upon the simple food that is taken in from the earth
and from the air. We are led to believe that it wishes something more
substantial; that it needs a _meat_ diet; and that to secure this, it
teaches its leaves to capture flies and insects in order that it may
suck in their juices.
These leaves are veined in a curious and striking fashion. The
bright-colored veins may convince the insects of the presence of the
sweet nectar in which they delight. At all events, in some way they
are tempted to enter the hollow leaf; and, once they have crawled or
tumbled down its slippery inner surface, they find it impossible to
crawl back again, owing to the stiff hairs, pointing downward, which
line the upper part of the pitcher.
Even if they have wings, it is difficult for them to fly upward in so
straight a line as would be necessary to effect their escape.
When tired out in their efforts to get out of this cruel trap, they
fall into the water at the bottom of the pitcher, and are drowned.
Their bodies decay and dissolve; and it is thought that this solution
is taken in by the leaf, and turned over to the plant as food.
It is just the old, sad story of the spider and the fly, you see, only
now it is the pitcher and the fly.
But be sure to examine one of these pitchers if you possibly can, and
then you will understand better how the whole thing is managed.
The leaf in this picture (Fig. 153), for it is a leaf, you cannot find
in our North American swamps. It grows on a plant called _Nepenthes_, a
plant which lives in hot countries far from the United States.
[Illustration: FIG. 153]
The leaf in the picture is full grown, and all ready for its work of
trapping animals. Before it was old enough to do this, the lid which
is now lifted was laid nicely across the opening to the pocket, and so
prevented any unseasonable visits.
Sometimes these pockets are so large as to be able to hold and to hide
from sight a pigeon. They are gayly colored, and the rim around their
border is covered with a sugary, tempting juice. So you can guess
that the animals in search of nectar are not slow in accepting the
invitation offered by color and sweets, and that some of these are
imprudent enough to venture across the sticky edge. In this event they
are pretty sure to lose their footing on the slippery inner surface
of the pocket, and to fall into the watery liquid with which it is
filled. Even if they do not slip immediately, their efforts to crawl
back over the rim are defeated by a row of teeth such as you see in the
picture.
The liquid at the bottom of the leaf is not rain water, as in the
pitcher plant. It is given out by the leaf itself; and it contains an
acid which dissolves the animals’ bodies, so that their more nourishing
parts can easily be taken in by certain little cells which line the
lower part of the pocket, and which have been brought up to this work.
[Illustration: FIG. 154]
The next picture (Fig. 154) shows you a water plant. It is called the
“bladderwort,” because of the little bags or bladders which you see
growing from the branches under water. The little bladders are traps
set for water animals, which swim into them in their wish, perhaps, to
escape some enemy. But they are quite unable to swim out again; for the
door into the bladder is transparent, and looks like an open entrance
with a nice hiding place beyond. It opens easily from the outside, but
is so arranged that it will not open from within. So when the poor
little animal hurriedly swims into what seems to it a cozy resting
spot, and draws a long breath of relief at getting safe inside, it is
hopelessly caught, and must slowly starve to death, for there is no
chance of escape. It may live for nearly a week in this prison; but at
last it dies. Its body decays, and is taken in as food by the cells set
apart for that purpose.
Strangely enough, though we ourselves do not hesitate to kill animals
for food, and sometimes, I am sorry to say, for nothing but amusement,
we give a little shiver of disgust when we find these plants doing the
same thing. Some lines that came out in one of the magazines a few
years ago express this feeling:—
“What’s this I hear
About the new Carnivora?
Can little plants
Eat bugs and ants
And gnats and flies?
A sort of retrograding!
Surely the fare
Of flowers is air,
Or sunshine sweet.
They shouldn’t eat
Or do aught so degrading.”
MORE CRUEL TRAPS
The plants about which we read in the last chapter do not take any
active part in capturing insects. They set their traps, and then keep
quiet. But there are plants which lay hold of their poor victims, and
crush the life out of them in a way that seems almost uncanny.
This leaf (Fig. 155) belongs to a plant which lives in North Carolina.
It is called Venus’s flytrap.
[Illustration: FIG. 155]
You see that the upper, rounded part of the leaf is divided by a
rib into two halves. From the edges of these rounded halves run out
a number of long, sharp teeth; and three stout bristles stand out
from the central part of each half. When an insect alights upon this
horrible leaf, the two halves come suddenly together, and the teeth
which fringe their edges are locked into one another like the fingers
of clasped hands.
The poor body that is caught in this cruel trap is crushed to pieces.
Certain cells in the leaf then send out an acid in which it is
dissolved, and other cells swallow the solution.
After this performance the leaf remains closed for from one to three
weeks. When finally it reopens, the insect’s body has disappeared, and
the trap is set and ready for another victim.
The next picture (Fig. 156) shows you a little plant which is very
common in our swamps,—so common that some of you ought to find it
without difficulty next summer, and try upon it some experiments of
your own.
[Illustration: FIG. 156]
It is called the “sundew.” This name has been given to it because in
the sunshine its leaves look as though wet with dew. But the pretty
drops which sparkle like dew do not seem so innocent when you know
their object. You feel that they are no more pleasing than is the bit
of cheese in the mouse trap.
When you see this plant growing in the swamp among the cranberry vines
and the pink orchids, you admire its little white flowers, and its
round red-haired leaves, and think it a pretty, harmless thing. But
bend down and pluck it up, root and all, out of the wet, black earth.
Carry it home with you, and, if you have a magnifying glass, examine
one of its leaves.
The picture (Fig. 157) shows you a leaf much larger than it is in life.
The red hairs look like pins stuck in a cushion, and the head of each
pin glistens with the drop that looks like dew.
[Illustration: FIG. 157]
But the ants and flies do not take these drops for dew. They believe
them to be the sweet nectar for which they long, and they climb or
light upon the leaves in this belief.
And then what happens?
The next two pictures will show you (Figs. 158, 159).
[Illustration: FIG. 158]
[Illustration: FIG. 159]
The red hairs close slowly but surely over the insect whose legs are
already caught and held fast by the sticky drops it mistook for nectar,
and they hold it imprisoned till it dies and its juices are sucked in
by the leaf.
I should like you to satisfy yourselves that these leaves act in the
way I have described. But a bit of fresh meat will excite the red
hairs to do their work quite as well as an insect, and I hope in your
experiments you will be merciful as well as inquiring.
So you see that the little sundew is quite as cruel in its way as the
other insect-eating plants. But its gentle looks seem to have deceived
the poet Swinburne, who wonders how and what these little plants feel,
whether like ourselves they love life and air and sunshine.
“A little marsh-plant, yellow-green
And tipped at lip with tender red,
Tread close, and either way you tread,
Some faint, black water jets between
Lest you should bruise its curious head.
“You call it sundew; how it grows,
If with its color it have breath,
If life taste sweet to it, if death
Pain its soft petal, no man knows,
Man has no sight or sense that saith.”
THE FALL OF THE LEAF
You know that in autumn nearly all the leaves fall from the trees. To
be sure, a few trees (such as the pines and hemlocks) and some plants
(such as the laurel and wintergreen and partridge vine) do hold fast
their leaves all winter; but these are so few as compared with the many
plants which lose their leaves, that they hardly count.
Perhaps you never stopped to wonder why most plants get rid of their
leaves before winter comes on; but you feel pretty sure now that there
is some good reason for a habit that is adopted by nearly all the
plants that live in this part of the country.
When we were talking about the way in which leaves defend themselves
from different dangers, we found that evergreen leaves, the leaves
which hold fast to the tree and keep fresh all winter, manage to keep
their water safe inside their cells by wearing a very thick skin, and
by not having too many little leaf mouths. For when a leaf has a thin
skin and a great many mouths, its water leaks away very quickly. And
if many such leaves should remain upon a plant into the winter, might
it not happen that they would let off all its water at a time when its
roots could not find any more in the frozen ground? And thus might not
the leaves kill the plant by draining it quite dry?
So you can see why it is well for most plants to shed their leaves
before winter comes on and the root’s drinking water is turned into
ice.
But when a plant is about to shed its leaves, it takes care not to
waste the precious food which they hold. This food it draws back into
its stem and roots, laying it away in safe places beneath the buds
which are to burst another year.
It is this action on the part of the plant which changes the color of
the leaves every fall. That material which makes them green is broken
up, and part of it is taken away. That which is left is usually yellow
or brown or reddish, and gives the leaves the beautiful colors we see
in our October woods.
So whenever you see the woods changing color, losing their fresh green
and turning red and yellow, you can be sure that the trees have begun
to prepare for winter. You know that they are stowing away their food
in warmer, safer places than can be supplied by the delicate leaves.
And when all the food has been drawn out of the leaves, and packed away
in the right spots, then the plant finishes a piece of work it began
some time before. This piece of work is the building-up of a row of
little cells just where the leafstalk joins the stem or branch. When
this row is complete, it acts almost like a knife, loosening the stalk
from the stem.
Then the leaf’s life work is over; and with the first breeze, the empty
shell, which is all that is left, breaks away from the parent plant,
and drifts earthward.
PART VI—FLOWERS
[Illustration: Decoration]
THE BUILDING PLAN OF THE CHERRY BLOSSOM
One day your teacher brought to school a branch broken from the cherry
tree. This she placed in water, standing the tumbler on the sunny
window sill; and now its buds have burst into a glory of white blossoms.
To-day I want you to study the flower of the cherry; for if you know
all about this flower, which is put together in a rather simple way,
one that is easy to study, it will not be so difficult for you to
understand other, less simple flowers.
You may wonder why I do not wait till the cherry tree outside is in
blossom; but if we waited till May, other flowers, which are not built
on quite so simple a plan, would have come and gone, and you would not
have been able to understand them so well as if you had first studied
the simple make-up of the cherry blossom.
Last fall we learned a little about this flower, but we had only its
picture to help us in our work: so I think it well to begin all over
again.
In looking at the cherry blossom (Fig. 160), we should first notice the
green cup which holds the rest of the flower.
This cup is divided into five green leaves.
During the babyhood of the flower, when it was quite too young to face
the cold, windy world, these green leaves were folded together so as to
shut away from all harm its more delicate parts.
Above this green cup we see a circle made up of five white leaves.
These pretty leaves are spread outward as if they were quite proud of
themselves, and eager to attract attention.
And that is just what they are trying to do; for the cherry blossom is
not wise enough to know that here in the schoolroom there are no bee
visitors to bring it yellow dust, and to help it grow into a cherry.
These leaves are the little handkerchiefs which the cherry tree, just
like the apple tree we read about long ago, uses in signaling the bees.
[Illustration: FIG. 160]
Within the circle of white leaves you see a quantity of what we named
“pins with dust boxes.” You remember that these dust boxes hold the
powdery material which is as wonderful as Cinderella’s fairy godmother
in its power to do strange and surprising things.
And in the very center of the flower you find a single “pin,” as we
called it, with a flat top which is not a dust box.
But you remember that at the foot of this pin is another sort of box, a
seedbox (Fig. 161).
And you have not forgotten that it is on the flat top of this pin that
the bee brushes the yellow dust which gives new life to the seed below,
and turns the little case of the seedbox into the juicy cherry.
So now what do we find in the cherry blossom? We find
1. A green cup cut above into separate leaves.
2. A circle of white leaves.
3. Some pins with dust boxes.
4. One pin with a seedbox.
[Illustration: FIG. 161]
Here you have the plan on which the cherry blossom is built (for
flowers, like houses, are built on different plans), and the building
plan of the cherry blossom is one of the simplest of all. So it is
well, before studying more difficult flowers, to feel quite at home
with this one. And you must try to remember first what work each part
of the flower is expected to perform; for you see that the leaves of
the green cup, the pretty white leaves, the pins with dust boxes, and
the pin with a seedbox, have each and all their special task,—a task
which they alone are able to accomplish.
Now, in talking about a flower it is troublesome to use a great many
words where one would answer every purpose, so I will tell you what
these different parts of the flower have been named; and by taking a
little trouble to remember these names, we can save a good deal of time.
The green cup is called the “calyx.”
“Calyx” is a Greek word meaning “cup.”
The circle of leaves which grow above the green cup or calyx is called
the “corolla.”
“Corolla” comes from a word which means “crown.”
The pins with dust boxes are called “stamens.”
“Stamen” comes from a word meaning “to stand.”
The pin with a seedbox is called the “pistil.”
“Pistil” is another form of the word “pestle.” A pestle is an
instrument used in the drug shops for pounding and mixing medicines.
You might ask to look at one the next time you are sent to the drug
shop, and then you can see for yourselves if it really looks like its
namesake, the pin with a seedbox.
Perhaps at first you may find it a little difficult to bear in mind
these four words with their meanings; but soon they will become quite
easy, and will save you much trouble.
Green cup,—calyx.
Circle of flower leaves,—corolla.
Pins with dust boxes,—stamens.
Pin with seedbox,—pistil.
If you remember the names of these four parts of the flower, how the
different parts look, and what they do, you will have made a good start
in the study of flowers.
LILIES
I think most of you know by sight at least one of the three following
flowers.
I have asked for pictures of three different kinds of lilies, so that
the city and country children alike may recognize an old friend; for
every spring the white Easter lily (Fig. 162) stands outside the flower
shops, and decorates the churches, and travels through the streets in
the peddler’s cart; while in summer time the country is bright with the
wood and meadow lilies (Figs. 163, 164).
[Illustration: FIG. 162]
[Illustration: FIG. 163]
And I hope that even now one of the living blossoms is before you, for
I want you to see for yourselves what plan these lilies use in flower
building.
The building plan of the cherry, you remember, began with a green cup
or calyx.
Do you find in the lily any green cup?
No, there is nothing of the sort in the lilies. You see only a circle
of flower leaves. In the last chapter you learned to call such a circle
the corolla. But the wise men say that without a calyx there cannot
be a real corolla. So in the lily we will speak of the “flower leaves”
instead of the corolla.
Next we find six of the pins with dust boxes, or the stamens.
And then we come to the pin with a seedbox below, or the pistil.
[Illustration: FIG. 164]
So the building plan of the lily has only three divisions:—
1. Flower leaves.
2. Stamens.
3. Pistil.
If you look at the lower side of the outer row of flower leaves, you
will see that they are streaked with green; and that when the flower is
still in bud, only the green, thick parts of these leaves are exposed
to the wind and cold, while the more delicate parts of the blossom are
hidden almost as snugly as though they were covered by the leaves of a
green cup or calyx.
[Illustration: FIG. 165]
These lilies are pleasant flowers to study. Their different parts are
so large and simple that you have no doubt as to what they are meant
for. The bees could hardly overlook their great, showy handkerchiefs;
and the heaping dust boxes must powder the visiting bees so freely with
golden or brownish dust, that plenty of this is sure to be carried to
the pistil of a neighboring blossom; and the flat tip of this pistil is
so large and so sticky, that, once the dust is brushed upon it, it is
sure to stay there until its wonderful work is accomplished.
The gay tulip (Fig. 165) is a cousin to the lily. It is built on almost
the same plan. There is no green cup in the tulip; but every tulip has
1. Flower leaves.
2. Stamens.
3. Pistil.
The tip of the tulip’s pistil is divided into three parts.
[Illustration: Decoration]
ABOUT STAMENS
Let us take a good look at the stamens of the Easter lily. There are
six of these. Each dust box is fastened to the tip of a tall stalk.
Fig. 166 shows you a single stamen from the Easter lily. It is drawn
somewhat larger than life. Its box has opened, and is letting out some
grains of dust.
[Illustration: FIG. 166]
There are many different kinds of stamens. I will show you some
pictures that will give you an idea of their great variety. Here is one
taken from the flower of the shin leaf (Fig. 167). The dust makes its
escape through two little openings at the very top of the box.
[Illustration: FIG. 167]
That shown in Fig. 168 is from the barberry. The sides of the box
open like a door which is hinged on top. This arrangement lets out a
quantity of dust.
Here is a collection of stamens of different sorts. Fig. 169 has two
boxes at the top of its stalk, and so has Fig. 171. Fig. 172 has a
crosspiece, with a good-sized box at one end, and only the little
beginnings of a box at the other. Fig. 170 has a similar crosspiece,
with a box at one end only.
[Illustration: FIG. 168]
[Illustration: FIG. 169]
You see that flower faces show quite as much variety as do the faces
of the people you know. You must not expect to find stamens all alike,
any more than you would expect all the boys and girls you know to have
noses of the same shape, or hair of the same color.
[Illustration: FIG. 170]
[Illustration: FIG. 171]
[Illustration: FIG. 172]
This picture (Fig. 173) shows you all the stamens of the pea blossom.
Do you notice that quite a number of these (nine, in fact) grow
together close about the pistil, while the tenth one stands alone? That
is a strange custom always observed by the stamens of the pea.
[Illustration: FIG. 173]
[Illustration: FIG. 174]
Next we see all the stamens from one of the tiny flowers of the
golden-rod (Fig. 174). These are very much larger than life. There are
five of them, fastened together in a sort of tube. Split open this tube
and flatten it out. Now they look like five little sisters, arm in arm
(Fig. 175).
And here, again joined in a tube, we see the stamens of the mallow
(Fig. 176). From the hollow of this tube stand out the tops of the
mallow’s pistils.
Some flowers have so many stamens that you would find it almost
impossible to count them. This little blossom (Fig. 177), the
enchanter’s nightshade (drawn much larger than life), has only two.
[Illustration: FIG. 175]
[Illustration: FIG. 176]
[Illustration: FIG. 177]
I hope that you children, from now on, will be unwilling to pass by a
flower without looking to see whether its stamens are few or many; and
I hope you will try to carry away in your minds a clear idea of the
size and shape of their dust boxes.
[Illustration: Pollen]
FLOWER DUST, OR POLLEN
When a child smells a flower, he is apt to put his nose right into the
middle of the blossom, and to take it out with a dab of yellow dust
upon its tip.
When he brushes off this dust, of course he does not stop to think that
each tiny grain holds a speck of the wonderful material we read about
some time ago, the material without which there can be no life.
And probably he does not know that the dust grains from the lily are
quite unlike those which he rubs upon his nose when he smells a daisy;
that different kinds of flowers yield different kinds of flower dust.
If you should look through a microscope at a grain of flower dust from
the lily, you would see an object resembling Fig. 178.
[Illustration: FIG. 178]
[Illustration: FIG. 179]
[Illustration: FIG. 180]
[Illustration: FIG. 181]
[Illustration: FIG. 182]
Fig. 179 shows a grain from the pretty blue flower of the chicory.
Fig. 180 is a dust grain from the flower of the pine tree. Fig. 181 is
from the laurel, and the odd-looking Fig. 182 is from a dust box of the
evening primrose.
[Illustration: FIG. 183]
The next picture (Fig. 183) shows you a group of dust grains from
flowers of different kinds, one looking like a porcupine, another like
a sea shell, another like some strange water animal, and all, I fancy,
quite unlike any idea you may have had as to the appearance of a grain
of flower dust.
When you are older, I hope it may be your good luck to see through a
microscope some of the odd shapes and curious markings of different
kinds of flower dust, or “pollen,” as this flower dust is called in the
books.
And now that you know something of the appearance of flower dust,
perhaps you wish to learn a little more of the way in which it helps
the flower to turn into the fruit.
[Illustration: Decoration]
ABOUT PISTILS
But first you must know a little something about the pistil, if I am
really to make clear to you how the flower dust helps the flower to
change into fruit.
This picture (Fig. 184) shows you the pistil of the lily. At the foot
of this pistil, you remember, is the box which holds the lily’s seeds.
[Illustration: FIG. 184]
The top of the lily’s pistil is quite large and somewhat flat. It is
almost as sticky as if it had received a dab of glue.
This flat top dwindles below into a stalk, which grows larger again at
its lower end.
Now take a sharp knife and cut open lengthwise this pistil.
The lower, thicker part, seen through a magnifying glass, looks like
Fig. 185. You see a great many baby seeds fastened to a central wall.
Each one of these seeds holds a speck of the wonderful material without
which there is no life. But this speck of life has not the power to
make the seed grow into a plant. To do this, the seed must have some
outside help; and this help can come only from a grain of flower dust.
[Illustration: FIG. 185]
Perhaps you wonder how a dust grain brushed on the pistil’s flat top
can ever reach the baby seeds hidden away in the seedbox.
I could not tell you to-day how this is done were it not for those wise
and patient men and women who have spent days and weeks and months, and
even years, in watching and studying the ways of plants.
But first let me ask you a question.
What happens when a healthy seed falls on moist ground?
Why, it seems to take in the moisture, and to thrive upon it. It swells
up, and at last it bursts open, and it sends a root down into the earth.
Now, something not altogether unlike this happens when a lily dust
grain falls upon the moist tip of a lily pistil. The dust grain sucks
in the moisture. It grows bigger and bigger. The outer skin becomes
too small for the swelling contents. At last it bursts open, letting
out a little tube.
This little tube works its way down through the stalk of the pistil,
almost as a root pushes down into the earth, and at last it reaches one
of the seeds in the seedbox below.
And into this tiny seed the little tube pushes its way.
The tube has carried with it that speck of wonderful living material
which every dust grain holds. And when this living speck has been added
to that which the seed already holds, a great change begins to come
about.
This new touch of life, added to that already present, gives the lily
seed the power to grow into a lily plant.
The other dust grains that were brushed upon the flat top of the lily’s
pistil act in just the same way. Apparently without difficulty the
different tubes find their way to the different seeds, till at last
each one has received the fresh touch of life without which it cannot
grow into a lily plant.
[Illustration: FIG. 186]
I cannot show a lily dust grain in the act of sending out its
life-bearing tube; but above is a dust grain (Fig. 186) from the thorn
apple. You see that it has burst open, and that a tube is pushing its
way out.
This picture (Fig. 187) is that of a pistil seedbox cut open, showing
you a tube that is working its way from the dust grain above to a tiny
seed in the seedbox below.
[Illustration: FIG. 187]
As I told you in the last chapter, the name “pollen” has been given to
this wonder-working flower dust. A grain of flower dust is a grain of
pollen.
In many flowers you will find a pistil much like the one that you see
in the lily.
But there are as many different kinds of pistils as there are different
kinds of stamens.
This pistil (Fig. 188) is from the grass of Parnassus, that pretty
white flower which you find in the wet meadows in August and September.
It has no real stalk, you see, like that of the lily; but it is quite
thick all the way from top to bottom. In Fig. 189 it is cut across,
showing the seeds inside.
[Illustration: FIG. 188]
[Illustration: FIG. 189]
[Illustration: FIG. 190]
[Illustration: FIG. 191]
[Illustration: FIG. 192]
Many pistils that are joined in one piece below, where the seeds are
held, separate above into two or more parts. Fig. 190 shows the seed
holder of a saxifrage, divided into two pieces above; Fig. 191 gives
that of the Saint John’s-wort, separating into three parts; that of
the sundew (Fig. 192) separates into six parts. Fig. 193 is a section
of the pea flower. This is cut lengthwise so as to show you the seeds
which line the inner surface of the pistil. Here you have the baby pea
pod.
All these flowers have only one real pistil,—one pistil which may
persuade you, by the way in which it separates above, into thinking
that there are more than one. So you must be on your guard in this
respect, and remember that flowers have a way of playing tricks with
all but the most wide-awake of boys and girls. Look long and carefully
before you declare that a flower has only one pistil.
[Illustration: FIG. 193]
Here we see half of a buttercup (Fig. 194). The buttercup has a great
many entirely separate pistils. Look sharply at the picture, and you
will see them crowded upon the little thimble-shaped object in the
middle of the blossom. Do not confuse them with the stamens, for the
buttercup has also a great many stamens. When buttercup time comes
round, I want every one of you to look at these many pistils and
stamens.
[Illustration: FIG. 194]
[Illustration: FIG. 195]
The next picture (Fig. 195) shows you a strawberry. In the strawberry
blossom the pistils are so small, and so crowded, and so hidden by the
many stamens, that it is not easy to see them; and so I show you the
full-grown berry, with little pistils scattered all over its surface.
Each of those tiny objects which stand out on the strawberry is a
separate pistil.
Whenever you look at a flower, I want you to remember that its bright
flower leaves will soon fade and fall, and that its stamens will lose
their pollen and wither away, but that the pistil or pistils will
remain, turning at last into the ripened fruit,—the fruit which is the
end, the aim, the object, of the plant’s life.
[Illustration: Decoration]
THE FIRST ARRIVAL
[Illustration: Flowers]
I should like to ask each of you children to tell me what flower you
believe to be first to come in the spring.
Some of you have never stopped to think about this. But there are sure
to be a few among you who will name one special flower as the earliest
of the year.
Perhaps even in March you may have ventured into the woods to look for
the lovely, fragrant, waxlike blossoms of the trailing arbutus. You
know the sheltered hollow where the snow first melts; and there the
delicate pink flowers make you glad with their beauty, and with the
thought of the good time coming. To some of us this first hunt for the
arbutus is one of the great events of the year. It means the beginning
of long, delicious hours in the fresh air, with birds and trees and
butterflies and wild flowers as our chosen companions.
But not all of you will agree that this trailing arbutus is the first
spring flower. Many think the violet can lay claim to this honor. The
yellow violet especially may be found in the woods before the trees
have put forth their leaves.
And some say that the little blue liverwort (sometimes this is pink or
white) is the earliest of all; and others vote for the spring beauty,
or for the yellow adder’s tongue, or for the Dutchman’s breeches, or
for the anemone.
And still others say that the marsh marigold, the shining flower that
in April gilds the wet meadows, leads the procession.
But you are wrong, every one of you. The earliest blossom of the
year makes its appearance long before any of these flowers you have
mentioned.
The first plant to blossom knows better than to proclaim the change of
season by anything so fragile as a violet, an anemone, a spring beauty.
It sends out its rather coarse little flowers under the protection of
a tough waterproof hood, which shields them from the rude winds and
nipping cold.
This plant bears the ugly name of skunk cabbage (Fig. 196). Its broken
stem and leaves give out an odor which at once persuades you that its
title is deserved.
[Illustration: FIG. 196]
In the swamps the skunk cabbages send up by the dozen the curious
purple hoods which curl about the thick clusters of little flowers.
When you come across a colony of these queer-looking objects, no wonder
it never occurs to you that the first flower of spring is at hand. The
great shiny hoods look more like snails than like flowers; and indeed
usually the flowers are not in sight at all, so well are they shielded
by these hood-like leaves.
But each little hidden flower has four flower leaves, four stamens, and
one pistil. When they have been dusted with pollen by fly visitors, and
are preparing to turn into fruit, the purple hoods wither away. Then
the plant sends up clusters of large bright green leaves. In June you
see these great leaves everywhere in the wet woods.
So if you wish to be on hand to welcome the very first flower of the
year, you must begin to keep your eyes open by the end of February. You
must visit the swamps each day, and look for the purple hoods inside
which are snugly hidden the little blossoms of the skunk cabbage.
And I advise you now to take a sheet of paper and make a list of the
plants as you find them in flower. Put down the date of each blossom as
it appears, and the place where you find it. If you begin to do this as
children, and keep it up when you are older, you will take real delight
in the habit. Each year it will interest you more and more to turn
back to the old lists and discover whether the flowers are on time, or
whether they are late or early in making their first appearance.
I hope your teacher will start you at once with such a list; for the
sooner you begin, the more complete will be your pleasure in this
delightful season.
[Illustration: Decoration]
PUSSY WILLOWS
Soon after the skunk cabbage has sent up its purple hoods comes the
pussy-willow season. But it is not every child who has the luck to be
in the country at this time.
[Illustration: Pussy Willows]
There is a clean, sweet smell in the air. Down in the boggy meadow,
just before nightfall, the little frogs sing so loud that you wonder if
they are trying to make you believe the birds have come back.
The brook is getting a bright green border. The buds on the trees are
so big that you feel sure in a few hours they must burst open. And you
know that each new day may bring with it some happy surprise,—a bird, a
leaf, or a flower that you have not seen for many a long month.
So when you find the willow branches set thick with silken pussies, you
know that a happy time has begun, at least for you country children.
And even the city children learn to love these soft pussies when they
are placed in tall vases on the teacher’s desk.
If you look carefully at the different branches, you see that they bear
different kinds of pussies; and your teacher will tell you, or perhaps
you will discover yourselves, that these different branches were broken
from different trees.
Do you know what each “pussy,” or tassel, is made up of?
Each tassel is made up of many tiny flowers.
But willow flowers are built on quite a different plan from cherry
flowers. If you pick apart one of these tassels, and examine a single
blossom, you will find it hard to believe that it is a flower at all.
On one branch the tassels are all golden yellow. The flowers that
make up these yellow tassels have neither flower leaves nor pistils.
Each blossom has two stamens which are fastened to a little fringed
leaf, and nothing more. Such a flower, much magnified, is given in the
picture (Fig. 197). The golden color comes from the yellow pollen which
has been shaken from the dust boxes.
[Illustration: FIG. 197]
The other branch is covered with silvery green tassels. Each flower in
these tassels is made up of a single pistil, which is also fastened to
a little fringed leaf (Fig. 198).
[Illustration: FIG. 198]
So you see the building plan used by one kind of pussy-willow flowers
is nothing but two stamens; while the plan used by the other kind is
still simpler, it is nothing but one pistil.
The golden dust is carried by the bees from the willows which bear dust
boxes to those other willows whose flowers have only seedboxes.
When they have given to the bees their pollen, the yellow tassels fade
away; but the silvery green tassels, on account of their seedboxes,
grow large and ripe, turning into the fruit shown in Fig. 62, p. 61;
and this fruit is one of the kind which scatters its seeds abroad by
fastening them to silky sails.
[Illustration: Decoration]
ALDERS AND BIRCHES
There is another shrub or low tree growing along the brook’s edge which
flowers almost as early as the willows.
This is the alder.
Perhaps you noticed last fall that these alders were hung with a
quantity of little green tassels. These tassels did not fall off with
the leaves in November. Through the long winter they clung to the
shrub. Sometimes they wore little coats of ice which made them look
like the glass ornaments on a Christmas tree.
When the warm weather came, they put off their ice coats, and grew
larger and longer, and at last let out a quantity of stamens.
[Illustration: FIG. 199]
But on the same alder tree that bears these tassels with flowers made
up of stamens or dust boxes (Fig. 199, _a_), you find also the tassels
flowers made up of pistils (Fig. 199, _b_).
If you make a search, you will find the little upright clusters
composed of these flowers with pistils.
Late in the year, when these clusters have turned into fruit, they look
like this picture (Fig. 200).
[Illustration: FIG. 200]
The pretty birches are cousins to the alders, and keep house in much
the same way, bearing the tassels with stamens (Fig. 201, _a_) and the
little clusters made up of flowers with pistils (Fig. 201, _b_) on the
same tree.
[Illustration: FIG. 201]
The tassels on some of the birches are very beautiful. When full
grown, they are golden yellow, and so long and soft and graceful that
one feels like stroking them and playing with them as he would with a
kitten.
I hope every country child who reads this book and does not already
know the willows, the alders, and the birches, will make their
acquaintance this spring, and will examine their two kinds of flowers.
And I hope that branches from the different trees will be brought into
the city schoolroom, so that all can see these flowers, which are among
the very earliest of the year.
[Illustration: Branch and leaves]
[Illustration: Decoration]
THE GREAT TREES
Most people seem surprised to learn that all kinds of trees have
flowers. In March and April they go to the woods in search of the
trailing arbutus, the violet, the anemone; and when they have picked a
quantity of these, they come home and say, “These are the only flowers
we saw to-day.”
But if they had looked overhead, up into the trees, they would have
seen many more; for each tree has its own flower, and most of the trees
blossom very early in the year, before they put out their leaves.
There is a good reason for this, which I will tell you by and by.
One of the early trees to flower is the swamp maple. In March or April
its bright red blossoms tinge the wet woods with warm color. Sometimes
the snow lies thick on the ground at this season, and the little red
flower clusters fall, and look wonderfully pretty against the smooth
white sheet which is drawn beneath the trees.
At the same season, in our city parks and streets, sharp eyes will
discover the yellowish blossoms of the silver maple. Both of these
trees flower before they leaf.
The building plan used by maple flowers is rather confusing. In one
flower you will find both calyx and corolla, but not in another. One
blossom will have both stamens and pistils, another will have no
pistils.
[Illustration: FIG. 202]
[Illustration: FIG. 203]
Fig. 202 shows you a blossom from the sugar maple. It has stamens, but
no pistils. Next you see what was once a flower containing both stamens
and pistils (Fig. 203). The withered stamens can still be seen; and the
pistil is turning into the well-known maple key.
[Illustration: FIG. 204]
[Illustration: FIG. 205]
The great elms also put out their flowers before their leaves. Here
you see a flower cluster from the white elm (Fig. 204). Fig. 205 shows
you one of these little flowers enlarged; and in Fig. 206 you have the
blossom cut open so as to display its pistil, which grows into the
winged fruit you saw on p. 62.
[Illustration: FIG. 206]
In some of our city streets grows the poplar. Its flowers are crowded
into long green tassels. Many of these fall to the pavement below, and
lie there, looking like great caterpillars. These tassels are those
which bear the flowers with stamens. Now, if we were in the woods, we
should be pretty sure to find near by another poplar whose tassels do
not fall so quickly. This is because these are made up of flowers with
pistils. They cling to the tree not only till they have been powdered
with pollen from the neighboring poplar, but till their tiny seeds have
had time to ripen and are ready to start out on their life journey.
[Illustration: Decoration]
THE UNSEEN VISITOR
I promised to tell you why so many of the trees flower before they leaf.
Many of these tree blossoms are neither bright enough to attract the
attention of the bees and butterflies, nor so fragrant as to tempt the
passing insects to visit them; for when the flower handkerchiefs are
not large and bright enough to signal the bees, the blossom often gives
notice of its presence by a strong perfume. How, then, is the pollen
from one flower to reach the pistil of another? And especially how can
this be arranged when the flowers with pollen may live quite a way
off—on another tree, in fact—from the flowers with pistils?
“Perhaps the birds carry it,” suggests some child.
But if these little flowers are not beautiful enough, or sweet-smelling
enough, to please the bees and butterflies, it is hardly probable that
the birds will pay them any attention.
So let us go out into the woods with our eyes and our ears wide open,
and see if we can discover some flower visitor that does not ask for
fine clothes and sweet smells.
Through the bushes comes the lisp of the song sparrow. From overhead
falls the note of the bluebird. The bees are buzzing about the golden
willow tassels. On the top of an old tree trunk a butterfly is drowsing
in the sun’s rays. But already we know that neither bird, nor bee, nor
butterfly will go out of its way to help our pale, scentless little
tree blossoms.
A squirrel darts from under cover, and runs along the stone wall. Among
the dead leaves at our feet a little striped snake lies in a sluggish
coil. But squirrel and snake would be alike useless as flower visitors.
We are almost tempted to give up trying to guess the answer to the
riddle. Somewhat discouraged, we stop to rest on an old log overgrown
with delicate mosses.
A soft, sighing sound creeps through the pines at the foot of yonder
hill. Over the little hollow sweeps a gust of wind. A faint cloud, as
of dust, fills the air. One of the children begins to sneeze. Where can
the dust come from? The roads are still deep with mud. And, besides,
ordinary dust does not make us sneeze as though it were pepper.
Ah, my friend, you are getting warm, very warm indeed; for this dust is
no dried earth from the highroad. No, it is made up instead of golden
grains from the dust boxes that are swaying in the wind on yonder
trees. And as the trees just now are bare of leaves, the journey of the
pollen through the air is an easy matter. It is carried along by the
wind, settling here, there, and everywhere, sometimes in our throats
and noses in such a fashion as to make us sneeze, but also on the tops
of many little pistils whose seeds cannot ripen without its gift of new
life.
And so, although we have not seen the visitor who befriends these
little flowers that are neither beautiful nor fragrant, we have heard
his voice as it came whispering through the pines; and we know that
this whisper is the gentle voice of the wind.
Now you understand that it is well for those trees whose flowers
depend upon the wind for their pollen, to blossom before their leaves
are out, and thus likely to interfere with the pollen in reaching its
destination.
PLANT PACKAGES
On your walks through the woods these spring days I want you to notice
the neat and beautiful way in which plants do their packing; for the
woods now are full of plant packages,—little bundles of leaves and
flowers, done up with the greatest care.
Some of these have just appeared above the ground. Others have burst
from the branches of the trees and shrubs.
Of course, a plant does not like to send its young, delicate leaves and
flowers into the cold world without wrapping them up, any more than
your mother would like to send your baby brother out for the first time
without a great deal of just such bundling-up.
[Illustration: FIG. 207]
And so well wrapped are many of these plant babies, that it is not
an easy matter to guess just what they are, what kinds of leaves and
flowers will appear when the wrappings have been thrown aside.
Sometimes the package looks like the sharp-pointed object in the
picture at the head of this chapter (Fig. 207). Soon the leaves push
their way out of their papery envelope, and before long our friend
Jack-in-the-pulpit himself appears.
Sometimes it is such a woolly roll as you see in the next picture (Fig.
208). This roll soon uncurls into a pretty fern (Fig. 209).
[Illustration: FIG. 208]
[Illustration: FIG. 209]
The beech tree folds its leaves like fans (Fig. 210). The preceding
picture (Fig. 211) shows you how carefully and cleverly the hobblebush
packs its young leaves.
[Illustration: FIG. 211]
[Illustration: FIG. 210]
During their babyhood many leaves wear a hairy coat as a protection
from both cold and heat; but when their green skin becomes thicker,
they throw this off.
Most of these plant packages are very interesting and beautiful, and
well worth your attention. I wish that during these weeks of early
spring the country schools would hold exhibitions of these babes in the
woods, asking each child to bring what he considers a good specimen of
a plant package.
UNDERGROUND STOREHOUSES
Long ago we learned that certain plants stow away the food which they
are not fitted to use at the time in those thick underground stems
which most people call roots.
This food they hold over till the next year.
It is often a surprise, these spring days, to see how suddenly a little
plant will burst into blossom. One does not understand how it has had
time to get up such a display. Had it been obliged to depend for food
upon new supplies taken in by its roots and leaves, the flower would
have put off its first appearance for many a day.
So when a plant surprises you with any such sudden and early blossoms,
you can be pretty sure that its food supply has been on hand all winter.
Both in the garden and in the woods you can see for yourselves that
this is so. In the garden perhaps the earliest flower to appear is
the lovely little snowdrop. The snowdrop’s food is stored away in the
“bulb,” as we call its thick, underground stem, which lies buried in
the earth.
The other early garden flowers, such as the hyacinth, crocus, daffodil,
and tulip, are able to burst into beautiful blossoms only because of
the care and labor with which they laid by underground provisions last
year.
And in the woods at this season you find the yellow adder’s tongue,
spring beauty, anemone, wake-robin, Jack-in-the-pulpit, wild ginger,
and Solomon’s seal. Each of these plants has stores of food hidden in
its underground stem. This may take the shape of a bulb, or a tuber,
or a rootstock; but in any case it shows you at once that it is a
little storehouse of food.
A collection of the different kinds of underground stems which serve
as storehouses for the early-flowering plants would be quite as
interesting to work over as a collection of plant packages.
[Illustration: Decoration]
DIFFERENT BUILDING PLANS
This morning let us take a stroll in the woods with the idea of
noticing the different building plans used by the early flowers.
First we will go to the spot where we know the trailing arbutus is
still in blossom. Pick a spray, and tell me the plan of its flower.
“There is a small green cup, or calyx, cut into five little points,”
you say; “and there is a corolla made up of five flower leaves.”
But stop here one moment. Is this corolla really made up of five
separate flower leaves? Are not the flower leaves joined in a tube
below? If this be so, you must say that this corolla is five-lobed, or
five-pointed, not that it has five flower leaves.
“And there are ten pins with dust boxes, or stamens.”
Yes, that is quite right.
“And there is one of those pins with a seedbox below, one pistil, that
is, but the top of this pistil is divided into five parts.”
Well, then, the building plan of the trailing arbutus runs as follows:—
1. Calyx.
2. Corolla.
3. Stamens.
4. Pistil.
So far, it seems the same plan as that used by the cherry tree, yet in
certain ways this plan really differs from that of the cherry blossom.
The calyx of the cherry is not cut into separate leaves, as is that of
the arbutus; and its corolla leaves are quite separate, while those of
the arbutus are joined in a tube.
The cherry blossom has more stamens than the arbutus. Each flower has
but one pistil. But the pistil of the arbutus, unlike that of the
cherry, is five-lobed.
So, although the general plan used by these two flowers is the same, it
differs in important details.
[Illustration: FIG. 212]
Above you see the flower of the marsh marigold (Fig. 212). Its building
plan is as follows:—
1. Flower leaves.
2. Stamens.
3. Pistils.
This, you remember, is something like the building plan of the easter
lily. The lily has a circle of flower leaves in place of calyx and
corolla. So has the marsh marigold. But the lily has six flower leaves,
one more than the marsh marigold, and only six stamens, while the marsh
marigold has so many stamens that it would tire one to count them.
And the lily has but one pistil (this is tall and slender), while the
marsh marigold has many short, thick ones, which you do not see in the
picture.
So these two flowers use the same building plan in a general way only.
They are quite unlike in important details.
The pretty little liverwort and the delicate anemone use the same
building plan as the marsh marigold. This is not strange, as all three
flowers belong to the same family.
The yellow adder’s tongue is another lily. It is built on the usual
lily plan:—
1. Six flower leaves.
2. Six stamens.
3. One pistil.
The wild ginger (Fig. 213) uses the lily plan, inasmuch as it has no
separate calyx and corolla; but otherwise it is quite different. It has
no separate flower leaves, but one three-pointed flower cup. It has
stamens, and one pistil which branches at its tip.
[Illustration: FIG. 213]
The next picture (Fig. 214) shows you the seedbox, cut open, of the
wild ginger.
[Illustration: FIG. 214]
To find this flower, your eyes must be brighter than usual. It grows
close to the ground, and is usually hidden from sight by the pair of
round, woolly leaves shooting up from the underground stem, which
tastes like ginger. This thick underground stem is the storehouse whose
stock of food makes it possible for the plant to flower and leaf so
early in the year.
Fig. 215 shows you the pretty wake-robin. This is a lily. But it is
unlike the lilies we already know, in that its calyx and corolla are
quite distinct, each having three separate leaves. It has six stamens,
and one pistil with three branches.
[Illustration: FIG. 215]
The general building plan of the violet (Fig. 216) is the old one
of calyx, corolla, stamens, pistil. But the leaves of this calyx
(Fig. 217) are put together in a curious, irregular fashion; and the
different leaves of the corolla are not of the same shape and size as
in the cherry blossom. Then the five stamens of the violet are usually
joined about the stalk of the pistil in a way that is quite confusing,
unless you know enough to pick them apart with a pin, when they look
like this picture you see above, to the right (Fig. 218).
[Illustration: FIG. 216]
[Illustration: FIG. 217]
[Illustration: FIG. 218]
The garden pansy (Figs. 219, 220) is cousin to the violet. You notice
at once that it uses just the same building plan.
[Illustration: FIG. 219]
[Illustration: FIG. 220]
[Illustration: FIG. 221]
[Illustration: FIG. 222]
The wild geranium (Figs. 221, 222) is put together almost as simply as
the cherry blossom.
A more beautiful flower than the columbine it would be difficult to
find (Fig. 223). Its graceful hanging head and brilliant coloring make
it a delight to the passer-by.
[Illustration: FIG. 223]
It has not the fragrance of some other flowers, but for this there is a
good reason.
The columbine is so brightly colored that the nectar-hunting bee can
see it from a great distance.
It is only when a blossom is so small and faintly colored as to be
unlikely to attract the eye, that it needs to make its presence known
in some other way than by wearing gay clothes. By giving out fragrance
it notifies the bee that material for honey making is on hand.
So you see that a pale little flower with a strong fragrance is just as
able to attract the bee’s attention as is a big flower with its bright
flower handkerchiefs. A big flower with bright flower handkerchiefs
does not need to attract the bee by its perfume.
Perhaps you will be somewhat surprised to learn that this columbine
uses the old plan, calyx, corolla, stamens, pistil.
In the columbine the calyx as well as the corolla is brightly and
beautifully colored, and only the botanist can tell which is which. In
this way many flowers confuse one who is only beginning their study. So
you must try to be patient when you come across a flower whose coloring
and shape make it impossible for you to say what is calyx and what is
corolla. You should turn both over into the one division of flower
leaves, and when older you may be able to master the difficulty.
[Illustration: FIG. 224]
The pretty fringed polygala (Fig. 224) is one of these confusing
flower. You find it in the May woods. Its discovery is such a delight,
that one is not apt to make himself unhappy because he cannot make out
all its parts.
[Illustration: FIG. 225]
The jewelweed (Fig. 225), the plant which blossoms down by the brook in
August, is another of these puzzling blossoms.
[Illustration: Decoration]
A CELEBRATED FAMILY
Do you know this pretty flower (Fig. 226)?
[Illustration: FIG. 226]
It is the yellow lady’s slipper. It lives deep in the woods of May,
perhaps part way up the mountain side. It has several sisters. One of
these is the pink lady’s slipper, which blossoms just a little later.
Another is the white lady’s slipper. This comes late in June, and is
one of the loveliest of our wild flowers.
These three sisters belong to a celebrated family, that of the Orchids.
The Orchid family is noted for the beauty of its flowers, and for the
pains which these take to attract the attention of the bees.
The building plan used by the orchids is too difficult for you to
learn yet awhile. Perhaps the orchids take more trouble than any other
flowers to have their pistils well dusted with pollen. A good landing
place for the bee is provided; signs are hung out to point the way to
the hidden nectar; and if directions are followed, the pistil is sure
to receive the wished-for pollen.
This picture (Fig. 227) shows you an orchid which you see in the
windows of flower shops during the winter. It comes to us from far
South, not growing out of doors in our climate.
[Illustration: FIG. 227]
Its building plan would almost serve for a wayside tavern. You can see
that the pocket would answer as a front doorstep, making a convenient
landing place for bee or butterfly.
The dark spots on the upper flower leaf point downward to the
refreshment room.
Even more curious than this one are other orchids which grow in
far-away places.
In their efforts to please, they wear the most striking colors, and
take on a variety of fantastic shapes.
One of them dresses itself much like a bee. In this way perhaps it
secures a visit from the real bee.
Another is called the baby orchid, because in the center of each flower
is an object which really looks like a fairy baby.
There are some ten or twelve orchids which are common in our Northern
woods. I hope you children will keep on the lookout for them all summer.
Just now you could not tell whether or not a flower was an orchid.
But if you come across a plant whose flowers look as though they were
built to serve as wayside taverns for the bees, why, carry them to your
teacher, and ask her to find out for you whether they belong to the
Orchid family.
But it is only fair to tell you that some of our orchids bear flowers
so small and insignificant that you would hardly guess them to be
members of so distinguished a family.
[Illustration: Garden foxglove]
CLEVER CUSTOMS
On this page you see a picture of the garden foxglove.
The garden foxglove is an English wild flower. It is so striking and
beautiful that it was brought across the sea to decorate our gardens.
We can guess that the spots within each bell are the signposts leading
to the refreshment room.
The yellow false foxglove (Fig. 228), which grows wild in our woods in
midsummer, is a less brilliant flower than its English cousin, and is
without the spots that serve as signposts.
Our wood and meadow lilies (Figs. 229, 230) are well fitted to secure
bee visitors. Their colors are brilliant enough to catch the eye of the
most unobserving of bees in its voyage across the meadow, and their
spots vivid enough to lead it at once to the refreshment room.
Try for yourselves to follow these markings with your tongue, and you
will win the bee’s reward, a sweet drop of nectar.
[Illustration: FIG. 228]
Whenever you see a flower with such vivid markings as these, it will be
worth your while to play the bee, and start a honey hunt.
[Illustration: FIG. 229]
Sometimes the sweet drop lies at the base of the flower leaves, as in
the lilies; sometimes in a pocket, as in many of the orchids; sometimes
it is in the bottom of a long spur such as you see in the columbine,
violet, and nasturtium (Fig. 231).
Fig. 232 shows you the beautiful flowers of the mountain laurel.
[Illustration: FIG. 230]
These flowers play a clever trick on their bee visitors. They wish to
make perfectly sure that their pollen will be carried from one blossom
to another, and so they set a little trap.
In a freshly opened blossom each stamen is bent over, as you see they
are bent over in the picture (Fig. 233).
Their dust boxes are caught in little pockets of the flower cup. When
a bee lights on a flower (Fig. 234), the jar causes the dust boxes to
spring from the pockets with so much violence that the pollen is shaken
over the body of the visiting bee, which is sure to leave some of it on
the pistil of the next flower.
[Illustration: FIG. 231]
Some flowers take special care to prevent their pistils from being
dusted with pollen from the dust boxes of the same blossom. The
fireweed bears such blossoms as these.
[Illustration: FIG. 232]
[Illustration: FIG. 233]
In Fig. 235 you see that the stamens of the fireweed are large and
ripe, and ready to shed their pollen; but the pistil is bent sideways,
pushing its closed tip quite out of the corolla, and out of reach of
any pollen from a neighboring stamen.
[Illustration: FIG. 234]
[Illustration: FIG. 235]
[Illustration: FIG. 236]
Fig. 236 shows you another blossom from this same plant. The stamens
have shed their pollen, and are quite dry and withered; but its pistil
has straightened itself, and spreads out its four tips so as to receive
the pollen from another flower.
It is believed that those seeds which are touched with life by pollen
from another flower are more likely to change into healthy, hardy
plants than those which are quickened by the pollen of their own flower.
[Illustration: FIG. 237]
Such of you as live near the sea know the lovely sea pinks (Fig. 237),
which make a rosy carpet across the salt meadows early in August. The
stamens and pistils of this sea pink act in the same way.
[Illustration:Flower]
[Illustration: Decoration]
FLOWERS THAT TURN NIGHT INTO DAY
Already we have read that certain flowers attract insects rather by
their fragrance than by their brilliancy of coloring.
It is interesting to learn that some blossoms open usually only during
the night. Of course, if these flowers hope to receive visitors, and
get their share of pollen, they must devise some means of making known
their presence to those insects which are awake and at work in the
darkness.
You can understand that at night the brightest colors would be useless.
A red flower is less easily seen in the darkness than a white or a
yellow one; so night-opening flowers nearly always wear a white or
yellow dress.
And not only this: to make sure that they will not be overlooked, and
so miss the chance of ripening their seeds, they send out a strong
fragrance as soon as the night falls. Through the deepest gloom this
message of invitation reaches the wandering moth.
Do you know the evening primrose (Fig. 238)? There ought to be no need
of asking you this, for it is one of our commonest wayside plants. But
perhaps you have hardly noticed it, because ordinarily only at night is
its flower wide awake.
[Illustration: FIG. 238]
When the sun has set, this pale yellow blossom unfolds, and gives out a
strong, sweet fragrance, which means that it is “at home” to visitors.
After one short summer night it dies.
But during its little life the chances are that its invitation has been
accepted by the pretty pink moth which oftentimes you find asleep in
the faded flower cup.
The moth visitor has brought its hostess the pollen from another
blossom, and has powdered the pistil’s four spreading tips, so that the
little primrose seeds below get the needed touch of life, and the short
life of the flower has not been in vain.
If you keep on the lookout, you are likely to come across one of these
yellow flowers with the sleepy pink moth inside its cup. I have caught
this little fellow napping so often, that I have wondered if the nectar
of the evening primrose might not have the effect of a sleeping potion.
But after all, I suppose that pretty pink moths, like boys and girls,
are likely to be dull and sleepy in the daytime if they have been up
too late the night before.
[Illustration: Decoration]
HORRID HABITS
Did you ever know that some plants manage to attract insects in ways
that are quite disgusting to us human beings?
While spending a morning in the woods, some of you may have noticed an
odor so unpleasant that you were driven to find another resting place.
Perhaps you thought that this unpleasant smell was caused by the
decaying body of some dead animal; but had you known the truth, you
would have laid the blame where it rightly belonged.
And where was that, do you think?
Why, to that beautiful climbing plant close by, with large, thick
leaves, and clusters of pale, greenish flowers, that were twisting all
about the bushes. This plant it was that caused all the disturbance.
It is called the “carrion vine” on account of the carrionlike odor of
its flowers. Its pollen is carried from one little blossom to another
by tiny flies, drawn to the spot by a smell like that of decaying
flesh. These flies would pass carelessly over the sweet-smelling
carpet of the partridge vine, they would scorn the invitation of the
evening primrose; but the odor which drives us hurriedly from our cozy
corner induces them to gather together in hundreds. Whether they come,
actually expecting to find decaying flesh, I cannot say.
In some countries grows a plant which not only smells like decaying
flesh, but which adds to the deception by its red, beefy look, thus
doubly attracting the flies which like this sort of food.
THE STORY OF THE STRAWBERRY
In the wood which edges the meadow is a hollow where it is almost sure
to be cool and shady. Let us find our way there this morning, and see
how we can amuse ourselves.
[Illustration: Strawberry plant]
At first we want only to enjoy the wind which is coming through
the trees, or to lie back on the grass and spy out the bird which
is singing overhead, or else to laugh at the red squirrel which is
scolding away at a great rate above us.
Suddenly our eyes fall on a cluster of ripe, shining wild strawberries.
Bird and squirrel are forgotten, for no fruit of all the year is
prettier to look at than the wild strawberry; and, what is more
important, no other fruit has such a delicious flavor of the woods and
fields.
Soon we have eaten all the berries within reach. The creeping vines
lead us out into the meadow, where we push aside the long grasses and
pick one ripe mouthful after another. At last we are satisfied to go
back to our shady nook.
The little white blossoms that a few weeks ago were so plentiful have
nearly all disappeared. Who among you can tell me how these juicy
berries have managed to take the place of the blossoms?
[Illustration: FIG. 239]
[Illustration: FIG. 240]
[Illustration: FIG. 241]
Why, ever so many of you can tell me much of the story, at any rate.
It is very nearly that of the apple and cherry and plum and pear. The
nectar-hunting bee carried the pollen of its many stamens from one
strawberry blossom to another, leaving some of it on the flat tips
of its numerous pistils. Down the pistils’ stalks went the tiny life
bearing tubes which pushed their way into the little seeds below.
[Illustration: FIG. 242]
[Illustration: FIG. 243]
So far, the story of the strawberry is not new to us; but just here
it begins to differ from the stories of the apple and pear, of the
plum and peach and cherry. The flowers of all these trees had but one
seedbox. But each of the many little strawberry pistils has a separate
seedbox; and when the little seeds within get their touch of new life,
the flat, cushionlike object (Fig. 241) which bears these many pistils
begins to act in a most surprising manner.
[Illustration: FIG. 244]
This flat flower cushion swells upward and outward (Fig. 242), growing
big and juicy and sweet, bearing its pistils (Fig. 243) with it.
And so in the strawberry blossom it is the flat cushion hidden out of
sight which grows into the delicious fruit.
[Illustration: Strawberry blossom]
[Illustration: Blackberry plant]
A COUSIN OF THE STRAWBERRY
The strawberry is a member of the great Rose family. Among its many
cousins we find the blackberry and the raspberry.
The blackberry blossom (Fig. 245) also has five white leaves, and a
center made up of pistils and stamens.
When its white flower leaves fall, and its empty dust boxes wither, we
see the blackberry begin to take the place of the blossom, just as we
saw the strawberry take the place of the strawberry blossom (Fig. 246).
But now we are about to discover the way in which the blackberry
differs from the strawberry.
Cannot some boy or girl tell me in what way they are different?
“One is black, and the other is red.”
But that is not the answer I want. Perhaps it is hardly likely that
any child could guess what I have in mind. Still a little exercise in
guessing is as good for your brains as gymnastics are good for your
bodies.
[Illustration: FIG. 245]
Now I will tell you what this difference is; and I want you to try
and understand it clearly, so that you will be able to explain it
to others, for I doubt if the grown-up people could give any better
answers than you. I think your fathers and mothers will be both
surprised and pleased when you show them some summer day how truly
different are these two berries.
You remember that in the strawberry we saw plainly that it was the flat
flower cushion which swelled into the ripe strawberry,—the cushion
which was quite hidden by the many pistils; and though these pistils
were scattered thickly all over the ripe, red fruit, these little
pistils with their seedboxes were too small and dry to add flavor or
richness to the berry.
But if we watch the growth of this blackberry, we see that things are
different.
[Illustration: FIG. 246]
We see that the pistils of this fruit do not remain small and dry, as
with the strawberry. No, indeed! their little seedboxes grow bigger
and juicier every day, and they turn from green to red and from red to
black. They do not remain hard to the touch, but become so soft that a
slight pressure will bruise them and stain your fingers purple. And we
enjoy eating the full-grown blackberry (Fig. 249) because a quantity of
these juicy seedboxes are so packed upon the juicy flower cushion that
together they make a delicious mouthful (Figs. 247, 248).
[Illustration: FIG. 247]
[Illustration: FIG. 248]
[Illustration: FIG. 249]
The flower cushion of the blackberry is long and narrow, not broad and
flat like that of the strawberry.
So do not forget that in the strawberry we enjoy eating the ripened
flower cushion, while in the blackberry the juicy seedboxes give to the
fruit more of its size and flavor than does the flower cushion.
[Illustration: Blackberries on the vine]
ANOTHER COUSIN
Here we see a branch from the raspberry bush (Fig. 250). How is the
raspberry unlike both strawberry and blackberry? Let us place side by
side these three berries (Figs. 251, 252, 253).
[Illustration: FIG. 250]
[Illustration: FIG. 251]
[Illustration: FIG. 252]
[Illustration: FIG. 253]
Once more we observe that the strawberry is the flat flower cushion
grown big and juicy.
Again we see that the seedboxes of the blackberry packed upon the
swollen flower cushion make up much of the fruit.
But in the raspberry we find that the red, ripe seedboxes alone make
the berry which is so good to eat.
When we pick this raspberry, we find that the flower cushion remains
upon the plant, instead of coming off in our fingers and helping to
make a luscious morsel, as with the other two fruits (Figs. 254, 255).
[Illustration: FIG. 254]
[Illustration: FIG. 255]
I hope you will remember how these three berries differ one from
another.
Why the blossoms of these three plants grow into berries in three
different ways, we do not know; but our time has been well spent if we
remember that they do change in these three ways.
The more we see and question and learn, the more pleasure we shall find
in our own lives, and the better able we shall be to make life pleasant
for others.
[Illustration: Blossom and berry]
[Illustration: Peas]
PEA BLOSSOMS AND PEAS
The Pea family is a large one, and it is worth our while to find out
what plan it uses in flower building.
Let us look at a pea blossom and see of what parts it is made up.
“There is the green cup, or calyx,” you say.
Yes, that is plain enough. It is cut up into five little leaves.
“And there is a circle of flower leaves, which makes the corolla.”
Let us pull apart both calyx and corolla, and place the separate leaves
as in the picture (Fig. 256).
The five smaller leaves, the ones marked _ca_, are the green of the
calyx.
The five larger ones, marked _co_, belong to the corolla. These, you
notice, are not all alike. The upper one is much the largest.
[Illustration: FIG. 256]
The two side ones are alike.
In the real flower the two lower ones are joined so as to form a little
pocket.
And what else do you find?
Now, if you do not pull apart the pea blossom, you find nothing else.
But you know that the seed-holding fruit is the object of the flower’s
life, and that so this flower is pretty sure to have somewhere either a
pistil with its seedbox, or stamens with their dust boxes, or both; for
without the seeds of the seedbox, and the pollen of the dust boxes, no
fruit can result.
So, knowing that the pea blossom cannot give birth to a pea pod without
stamens and pistil, let us have a search for these.
[Illustration: FIG. 257]
As I told you, the two lower leaves of the corolla are joined so as to
form a sort of pocket (Fig. 257). Now, surely, a pocket is meant to
hold something. So take a pin and slit open this pocket. As the two
sides spring apart, out flies some golden pollen, and we see that the
little pocket is far from empty. It holds ten stamens and one pistil.
If you look at these carefully (Fig. 256), you see that one stamen
stands alone, while the other nine have grown together, forming a tube
which is slit down one side. This tube clings to the lower part of the
pistil.
Now, if you pull this tube away, what do you see?
You see a little, green, oblong object, do you not (Fig. 258)?
And what is it? Do you not recognize it?
[Illustration: FIG. 258]
Why, it is a baby pea pod. Within it lie the tiny green seeds (Fig.
259) which are only waiting for the fresh touch of life from a pollen
grain to grow bigger and bigger till they become the full-grown seeds
of the pea plant,—the peas that we find so good to eat when they are
cooked for dinner.
So, after all, the building plan of the pea blossom is nothing but the
old-fashioned one which reads
1. Calyx.
2. Corolla.
3. Stamens.
4. Pistil.
[Illustration: FIG. 259]
Had I not told you to do so, I wonder if you would have been bright
enough to pull apart the little pocket and discover the stamens and
pistil.
What do you think about this?
THE CLOVER’S TRICK
[Illustration: Clover]
Here you see the bees buzzing about the pretty pink clover heads,—the
sweet-smelling clover that grows so thickly in the fields of early
summer.
Can you tell me what plan the clover uses in flower building?
You will not find this easy to do. Indeed, it is hardly possible, for
the clover plays you a trick which you will not be able to discover
without help.
You believe, do you not, that you are looking at a single flower when
you look at a clover head?
Well, you are doing nothing of the sort. You are looking at a great
many little clover flowers which are so closely packed that they make
the pink, sweet-scented ball which we have been taught to call the
clover blossom.
It is incorrect to speak of so many flowers as one; and whenever we
say, “This is a clover blossom,” really we ought to say, “These are
clover blossoms.” We might just as well take a lock of hair—a lock
made up of ever so many hairs—and say, “This is a hair.” Now, you all
know it would not be correct to do this, and no more is it correct to
call a bunch of clover blossoms “a blossom.” But as most people do not
understand this, undoubtedly the mistake will continue to be made.
Fig. 260 shows you one little flower taken out of the ball-like clover
head.
Can you think of any good reason why so many of these little flowers
should be crowded together in a head?
What would happen if each little blossom grew quite alone?
[Illustration: FIG. 260]
Why, it would look so small that the bee could hardly see it. And
sweetly though the whole clover head smells, the fragrance of a single
flower would be so slight that it would hardly serve as an invitation
to step in for refreshments.
So it would seem that the clover plant does wisely in making one
good-sized bunch out of many tiny flowers, for in this way the bees are
persuaded to carry their pollen from one blossom to another.
The moral of the clover story is this: Be very careful before you
insist that you hold in your hand or see in the picture only one flower.
[Illustration: Decoration]
MORE TRICKS
Can you think of any other flowers that deceive us as the clover does?
Early in May we see in the woods a tree that is very beautiful. It
is covered with what seem to be white blossoms. This tree is the
flowering dogwood, and it tricks us somewhat in the same way as does
the clover; for in this picture (Fig. 261) you see what nearly every
one believes to be a single flower of the dogwood. And if some time ago
you had been asked to give the building plan of the dogwood flower, you
would have been pretty sure to say that the four large white leaves
formed its corolla.
[Illustration: FIG. 261]
Here you would have been quite mistaken; for instead of one large
flower, the picture shows you a number of tiny blossoms, so closely
packed, and so surrounded by the four white leaves, that they look like
only one blossom.
Try to get a branch from the dogwood tree (only be sure to break it off
where it will not be missed), and pull apart what looks so much like
one large flower.
First pull off the four white leaves. Then you will have left a bunch
of tiny greenish blossoms. Look at one of these through a magnifying
glass. If eyes and glass are both good, you will see a very small
calyx, a corolla made up of four little flower leaves, four mites of
stamens, and a tiny pistil,—a perfect little flower where you never
would have guessed it.
But all by themselves they would never be noticed: so a number of them
club together, surrounding themselves with the showy leaves which light
up our spring woods.
In Fig. 262 you see the flower cluster of the hobblebush.
The hobblebush has still another way of attracting attention to its
blossoms. It surrounds a cluster of those flowers which have stamens
and pistils, and so are ready to do their proper work in the world,
with a few large blossoms which have neither stamens nor pistils, but
which are made up chiefly of a showy white corolla. These striking
blossoms serve to call attention to their smaller but more useful
sisters.
[Illustration: FIG. 262]
Sometimes a whole plant family will play this trick of putting a
quantity of flowers in one bunch or cluster.
The wild carrot (Fig. 263) is one of our commonest wayside weeds, a
torment to the farmer, but a beautiful plant nevertheless. Each one of
its lace-like flower clusters is made up of many flowers,—flowers which
are too small to live alone, and so have decided to keep house together.
[Illustration: FIG. 263]
You will notice that here, as with the hobblebush, the outer flowers
are large and more showy than the inner ones. They seem to feel that
with them rests the reputation of the family; that they must make the
most of themselves, and do all in their power to attract the bees and
butterflies.
The wild carrot belongs to the Parsley family. All the members of
this family collect a great many little flowers into one fairly large
cluster.
[Illustration: Decoration]
AN OLD FRIEND
There is one plant (Fig. 264) which you city children ought to know
almost as well as the country children. In the back yards and in the
little squares of grass which front the street, it sends up its shining
stars; and as for the parks, they look as if some generous fairy had
scattered gold coins all over their green lawns.
[Illustration: FIG. 264]
Now, what is this flower which is not too shy to bring its brightness
and beauty into the very heart of the crowded city?
It is the dandelion, of course. You all know, or ought to know, this
plucky little plant, which holds up its smiling face wherever it gets a
chance.
And now, I am sure, you will be surprised to learn that this dandelion,
which you have known and played with all your lives, is among those
mischievous flowers which are laughing at you in their sleeves, and
that regularly it has played you its “April fool;” for, like the
dogwood and the clover, this so-called dandelion is not a single flower.
No, what you call a dandelion is a bunch made up of a great many tiny
blossoms.
If you pull to pieces a dandelion head, you will find a quantity of
little yellow straps. Each little strap is a perfect flower.
Now, if you had been asked for the building plan of the dandelion, you
would have looked for the calyx, and you would have thought you had
found it in the green cup which holds the yellow straps.
And when you were looking for the corolla, perhaps you would have
said, “Well, all these yellow things must be the flower leaves of the
corolla.”
But when you began your hunt for stamens and pistils, you would have
been badly puzzled; and no wonder, for these are hidden away inside the
yellow straps, the tiny flowers of the dandelion.
So remember that when you cannot find the stamens and pistils within
what you take to be the single flower, you will do well to stop and ask
yourself, “Can this be one of the plants which plays tricks, and puts a
lot of little flowers together in such a way as to make us think that
they are one big flower?”
[Illustration: Decoration]
THE LARGEST PLANT FAMILY IN THE WORLD
The dandelion belongs to the largest plant family in the world. All the
members of this family have the dandelion trick of bunching together a
quantity of little flowers. From this habit the family takes its name.
It is called the “Composite” family, because with it, that which looks
like one flower is composed of many flowers.
To this great family belong some of the flowers which you know best;
and if you are not to be fooled again and again, you must learn to tell
by its blossoms whether a plant is a member of the Composite family.
This will not be difficult if you will be patient, and pull to pieces
a few of the flower heads which I am going to describe, and examine
carefully the building plan used by the separate flowers.
Fig. 265 shows you the field daisy. This pretty flower is an old
friend; and many of you know that its beauty is no comfort to the
farmer, who finds it a sign of poor soil and a nuisance, and does his
best to get rid of it.
As you know, the central part of the daisy is bright yellow, and the
narrow leaves which stand out in a circle around its yellow center are
pure white.
[Illustration: FIG. 265]
Now, if I had asked you some time ago for the building plan of the
daisy, I think you would have told me that the arrangement of little
green leaves underneath the flower head made up the calyx, and
naturally you would have believed the white leaves above to have formed
the corolla; and the chances are that the yellow center would have
seemed to be a quantity of stamens. As for the seed holders, you might
have said, “Oh, well! I suppose they are hidden away somewhere among
all these stamens.”
It would not have been at all strange or stupid if you had answered my
question in this way.
I know of no plant which dresses up its flowers more cleverly, and
cheats the public more successfully, than this innocent-looking daisy;
for not only does it deceive boys and girls, but many of the grown-up
people who love flowers, and who think they know something about them,
never guess how they have been fooled the daisy. Indeed, some of them
will hardly believe you when you tell them that when they pick what
they call a daisy, they pick not one, but a great many flowers; and
they are still more surprised when they learn that not only the yellow
center of the daisy is composed of a quantity of little tube-shaped
blossoms, but that what they take to be a circle of narrow white flower
leaves is really a circle of flowers, each white strap being a separate
blossom.
I dare not try to tell you how many separate blossoms you would find
if you picked to pieces a daisy and counted all its flowers,—all the
yellow ones in the center, and all the white outside ones,—but you
would find a surprisingly large number.
[Illustration: FIG. 266]
[Illustration: FIG. 267]
The picture above (Fig. 266) shows you a daisy cut in two, and next you
have one of the white outer flowers (Fig. 267). This flower, as we must
call it, has a pistil, but no stamens. The pollen is brought by flies
from the yellow central flowers to this pistil.
[Illustration: FIG. 268]
Here (Fig. 268) you see a picture of one of those yellow flowers which
have both stamens and pistil inside its tube.
If you children once make yourselves well acquainted with the make-up
of the daisy, seeing with your own bright eyes (not believing it just
because I tell you it is so) that there are many little flowers where
most people think they see only one big one, you will never forget it
as long as you live; and you will know something that many of the big
people about you do not know. Some day while walking across the fields
I think you will enjoy surprising them by pulling to pieces a daisy,
and explaining to them this favorite flower trick.
[Illustration: Decoration]
ROBIN’S PLANTAIN, GOLDEN-ROD, AND ASTER
Along the roadsides, in the month of May, grows a flower which you
children call a blue daisy. This has the yellow center of the field
daisy; but the narrow outer flowers which surround the yellow center
are not white, they are blue.
The real name of this flower is “robin’s plantain.” It is not a daisy,
though it belongs to the same big family. Here, too, the yellow center
is made up of many little tube-shaped flowers.
[Illustration: FIG. 269]
Later in the year the fields are white and purple with beautiful asters
(Fig. 269). It is easy to see that these asters are own cousins to
robin’s plantain. Their flower heads are put together in the same way,
and many of the asters wear the same blue or purple dress (Fig. 269).
When once you have become acquainted with the secret of dandelion and
daisy and aster and robin’s plantain, you will find it quite easy to
discover their little separate flowers. All these plants have large,
plain flower heads that you cannot mistake.
[Illustration: FIG. 270]
But with some members of this great Composite family you are going to
have more trouble, unless you take your time and keep your wits about
you.
[Illustration: FIG. 271]
Just when the asters begin to border the roadsides in the month of
August, the golden-rod (Fig. 270) hangs out its bright yellow flowers.
This golden-rod is one of the plants which you may find a little
troublesome; for its little flowers are so tiny, that even when a
number of them are fastened together in a bunch, the whole bunch looks
like a very small blossom (Fig. 271).
[Illustration: FIG. 272]
In each of these little bunches or heads (for when a number of flowers
are packed together in this way, we call the whole bunch a “head”)
there are a few of the strap flowers (Fig. 272) on the outside, and a
few tube flowers (Fig. 273) in the center; but the outer strap flowers
are so small that you can hardly believe they are really flowers, and
the tube flowers look hardly larger than ordinary stamens. To see them
at all clearly, you must use a good magnifying glass.
[Illustration: FIG. 273]
And you must search very patiently for the tiny bunch (Fig. 271) which
is the head of the golden-rod. Next you must pick to pieces this little
head, separating the outer from the inner flowers.
In hunting for a single head in this great yellow flower cluster, you
must look for the little cup-like arrangement, the tiny greenish or
yellowish leaves; for each head is held in one of these small cups.
Although the golden-rod is one of the most difficult of all the flowers
to understand, once you have seen for yourselves how each little head
is held in its tiny cup, you will find it easy enough to pick out its
single flowers, and then you will have mastered the secret of the
golden-rod.
[Illustration: Flowers]
THE LAST OF THE FLOWERS
We found, you remember, that the dandelion head was made up entirely of
strap flowers; and we saw that the daisy and aster and golden-rod were
made up partly of strap flowers, and partly of tube flowers.
And here you have a great thistle head (Fig. 274). If you should pull
it to pieces, you would find only tube flowers.
The Composite family always makes up its head in one of these three
ways, using either nothing but strap flowers, or nothing but tube
flowers, or else using tube flowers for the center of the head, and
strap flowers for the outside.
[Illustration: FIG. 274]
Now, I hope you will remember these three ways in which this important
family puts together its little flowers.
When you go into the garden where a big sunflower (Fig. 275) is trying
to peep into your neighbor’s yard, I hope your eyes will be sharp
enough to see that this sunflower is a cousin to the field daisy, and
that, although its brown center is much larger than the daisy’s golden
eyes, it is made up of tube flowers (Fig. 276) shaped much like the
tube flowers of the daisy.
And you will notice, I am sure, that the yellow circle about this brown
center is made up of strap flowers (Fig. 277) just like the circle
about the daisy center.
[Illustration: FIG. 275]
And what is that which falls like a golden shower from the great brown
center of the sunflower? Ah, you know well that that is the precious
pollen which powders thickly the visiting bees and butterflies, and
goes to make new sunflower plants.
[Illustration: FIG. 276]
The picture at the head of this chapter shows the wild sister of the
garden sunflower.
When you come across the bright blue flower of the chicory, you will
be reminded, I hope, of your dear old friend the dandelion; for the
chicory head, like that of the dandelion, is made up entirely of strap
flowers.
But when you pick a spray of everlasting, whose white and yellow
clusters you find on the rocky hillsides, you will have to use your
eyes with great care if you are to discover that here, as in the great
purple thistle head, are nothing but tube flowers.
[Illustration: FIG. 277]
PART VII—LEARNING TO SEE
[Illustration: Flowers]
A BAD HABIT
In fact, if you are to see any of the things that are really worth
seeing, you must study the art of using your eyes. You must _learn to
see_.
This world is full of things that are beautiful and interesting, things
that do not cost money, that can be had for the seeing.
School is nearly over now, and during the weeks that lie before you
there will be many hours which you children can call your own.
I wonder what you will do with these holiday hours?
Of course, you will play a great deal; at least, I hope you will, for
we need play almost as much as we need work. But one does not play
every minute, even in the holidays. I hope that all of you will spend a
part of your holidays in trying to be a little useful to your mothers.
But even then there will be some time left for other things,—things
that are not work, and that are not exactly play, yet that are a little
of each, and so perhaps better than either play or work alone.
Among these “other things” I hope “learning to see” will find its
place. I wish that every child who reads this book would make a
resolution that during these coming holiday weeks he will “learn to
see.”
There are many different ways of doing this. The children in the city
can learn this great lesson as well as those who live in the country.
There is much to be seen in the city besides people and houses, and
horses and wagons. There are the clouds of the sky by day, and its
stars by night. There are the trees in the squares, the birds and
flowers in the parks, and much besides.
The children who live by the sea do not have the great forest trees
that grow among the mountains; but for this loss they can comfort
themselves by the beautiful rose mallows (see the picture at the head
of this chapter) that grow in the marsh, by the sea pinks along the
creek, by the pretty shells and seaweeds on the beach.
But perhaps you think I am quite wrong in taking it for granted that
you need to “learn to see.” What gives me the idea that you ought to
learn any such lesson?
Well, nine times out of ten, if I hand a flower to a child and ask him
to look at it and then to tell me about it, he will stare at it, oh,
very hard indeed, for some moments, and then he will have nothing to
say.
Now, this cannot be the fault of the flower; for we have seen that the
flower is made up of so many different things that to tell about them
all takes some time. It must be the fault of the child; or at least
the fault of his eyes and brain, both of which are needed for really
seeing, and which probably he does not know how to use.
It must be that he has never “learned to see.” Perhaps he has used
his eyes well enough, and has really seen a great many things in the
flower; but his brain may not be able to put them together in the right
way, and to find the words that are needed.
If this is the only trouble, a little practice will make it all right.
He will find that his brain works better after each trial, just as a
new pair of scissors works better after it has been used several times.
But often the eyes do not seem to do their share of the work; and if
they do not, there is no chance for the brain to come to their help.
That is a sad state of affairs, because, if when we are young we let
our eyes form bad habits, such as not seeing the things they ought to
see, we are likely to be half blind all the rest of our lives.
It would be a terrible thing, would it not, to be told that you were
about to become blind, that soon you would be unable to see the things
about you?
Now, while I trust that none of you will ever become altogether blind,
I tell you honestly, I greatly fear that some of you are in danger of
becoming partly so,—of becoming blind to many of the things about you
that would please you greatly if you only saw them. And I know that
this sort of blindness must take from your lives much happiness.
But still you may wonder how I know this about children whom I have
never seen. How can I know whether the boys and girls who read this are
in any danger of losing their power to see?
Well, the only way I know about you boys and girls, whom I have never
seen, is by watching very carefully the ones I do see.
You children who live in New York, say, have never seen the children
who live in California; yet you feel sure that they have eyes and ears
just as you have, do you not?
And you are pretty confident that most of them like to play far better
than they like to work; that sometimes they are good-natured, and that
again they are quarrelsome; and that in many ways they are like the
boys and girls who live near you.
In just the same way I am able to guess that you children whom I do not
know are more or less like the ones I do know.
Now, among these children only a few, as I have said before, seem to
have the full use of their eyes. This troubles me, because the evil is
one that grows greater as the children grow older. Perhaps you know
that if you stop using any part of your body, that part soon begins to
lose its power of doing the things it was meant to do.
If you should not use your legs for a long time, they would grow so
weak that they could hardly carry you. It would be much as if you had
no legs, or at least as if you had legs that could not do the work they
were meant to do.
If you stopped using your hands, you would find your fingers growing
stiffer and stiffer, so that at last they could not take a good hold of
things.
And if your eyes are not used for seeing clearly the things before
them, they will grow less and less able to see clearly.
[Illustration: Decoration]
A COUNTRY ROAD
I have taken a walk along a country road which was bright with flowers
of many kinds, where lovely-colored butterflies and buzzing bees were
hard at work hunting for sweet stuff, where birds were singing in the
trees as they watched their nests, where a rabbit would dart from the
bushes close by, and a squirrel would scold at me from overhead,—where,
in short, there was so much to look at and delight in, that I could
hardly make up my mind to keep on to my journey’s end, instead of
stopping to see if I knew the names of all the flowers, to admire the
queer, bright-colored little patterns on the wing of the butterfly
which was resting on a neighboring blossom, and to find out what sort
of eggs were in the nest that I knew must be near at hand, for the
mother bird let out her secret by her frightened clucking.
Well, I have taken just such a walk; and on going into the house I
have felt as if I were obliged to put aside a book of enchanting fairy
stories, or rather as if I were turning my back on fairyland itself,
with all its wonderful sights and sounds and adventures.
And then what has happened?
Why, some child (it has not always been a child) has come in, and I
have said, “Was not that a fine walk? What did you see along that
lovely road?”
Now, if he was a boy (for I want to be quite fair), he probably had
seen the rabbit and given it chase; and it is more than likely that he
had stopped long enough to chuck a stone at the squirrel; and if the
mother bird had not finished with her foolish chatter, I fear he gave
her some evil moments by hunting for her nest, with no good intentions.
But if, fortunately for them, he had met none of these creatures, he
probably looked at me in surprise, and answered by look, if not by
words, “No, I thought it a long, stupid walk. I did not see a thing.”
And if it was a girl, I fear the answer, silent or spoken, was much the
same.
Now, I say that boy or girl must have been partly blind to have missed
seeing those wonderful flowers, and butterflies, and bees, and birds,
and many other interesting things which I have not time here to tell
about. Certainly they were not using their eyes properly; and the
longer they go about in such a way, more worthy of a bat than of a
well-made child, the more useless and bat-like will their eyes become.
It is really more natural for a child to use his eyes constantly than
it is for an older person. The grown-up man or woman is likely to have
so many things to think about, that eyes and brain do not always work
together, and so the surroundings are not noticed.
For every boy knows that if his head is full of the ball game he is
going to play, he runs along without eyes or thoughts for other things.
And every girl knows that if she is on her way to some friend to whom
she has a secret to tell, she is in such haste to reach her journey’s
end, and is so busy thinking what her friend will have to say about it
all, that of course there is no time to pay attention to anything else.
Her eyes may be in good working order, yet they are not of much use
unless her brain is ready to help them; and that little brain just now
is too busy with its secret.
No, by the people who are half blind I mean only those who much of the
time use neither eyes nor brain, who can neither tell you what they
have seen nor what they have been thinking about. Sometimes it seems as
if such people were not only half blind, it seems as if they were only
half alive.
A HOLIDAY LESSON
But I am in hopes that some of the children who read this book will
say, “I do not think it fair to call children half blind and only half
alive. I know I am not half blind. I saw all those things that Mrs.
Dana saw along that country road, and” (perhaps some of them may add)
“a good deal more too. I know all the different flowers by sight, and
the sunny hollows where the first ones come. I know where ever so many
of the birds build their nests, and how their different eggs are marked
and colored. Often I go down to the little pool in the woods where
they come for their bath. I know how the caterpillars wrap themselves
in leaves and come out beautiful butterflies. I have peeped into the
hollow of the tree where the red squirrel is bringing up its family;
and I have seen how the pretty green katydid scrapes his wings along
his sides, and makes the sound, ‘Katy did, Katy didn’t,’ and oh, so
many more things that I have not time to tell them all.”
Ah! that is just it. The child that knows how to use his eyes can see
so much, so many wonderful things!
That is why I am so anxious that he or she should not miss through
carelessness the revelations that come to the child alone.
It seems as though the woods and fields were more ready to tell their
stories, to whisper their secrets, to children than to grown people.
If people learn to use their eyes and ears only after they are grown,
I hardly think that they will ever read quite the same stories, ever
listen to quite such wonderful secrets, as if they had begun to look
and to listen when they were little children.
If fairy godmothers came now, as the stories tell us they did once upon
a time, to the christenings of our little ones, offering whatever gifts
the parents should choose, it seems to me one of the wisest selections
would be the power _to see_.
And so when I ask you children, now that you are putting by your lesson
books for many weeks, to learn one lesson this holiday time,—to _learn
to see_,—I am asking you to do something that will make your lives far
happier than they could be were this lesson left unlearned.
[Illustration: Flowers]
INDEX
(For the convenience of teachers and other older readers, technical
terms avoided in the body of the book are given in the index.)
A
Above-ground roots, 106-111.
Acorn, seed of oak, 68.
seed leaves of, 87.
a fruit, 95.
Adder’s tongue, yellow, 203, 216, 219.
Air, composition of, 151.
Air roots, 107.
Alder, black, 49.
Alder, speckled, 173.
Alder, swamp, 173.
Alder tassels, 207-209.
Almond seed, a food, 91.
Amphibious knotweed, 119, 123.
Anemone, 203, 209, 216, 219.
Animals and plants, difference between, 154, 155.
Anthers, see “dust boxes.”
Apple, study of, 11-19.
seed of, 20, 24, 27, 29, 93.
signs of ripeness of, 28, 29.
Apple blossom, parts of, 14, 15, 32.
buds of, 129.
Ash, seed of, 62.
Aster puffball, 59.
Asters, 251, 252, 254.
B
Baneberry, red, 49.
Baneberry, white, 49.
Barberry, 49.
stamens of, 193.
Bark, defined, 120, 121.
Basswood, leaves of, 165.
Bean, planting of seed of, 80.
seed leaves of, 81.
development of seed, 81-83, 96-98.
root of, 99.
stem of, 115, 117.
Bee, a pollen carrier, 17, 18, 189, 207, 226, 227, 233.
Beech tree, 215.
Beet, root of, 102, 103.
Birch tassels, 208, 209.
Birds, as seed transporters, 72, 73.
Bittersweet berries, 42.
Black alder, 49.
Blackberry, development of, 235-237.
Bladderwort, 179, 180.
Bloodroot, 106.
Bloom, 173.
Blue daisy, 251.
Blue flag, classified, 88.
Bristles, 175.
Bryophyllum, 132, 133, 150.
Buckwheat seed, a food, 91.
Buds, 125-133.
protection of, 126, 127, 131.
position of, 128, 132.
unprotected, 130.
on leaves, 132, 133.
Bulb, described, 105, 106.
an underground stem, 216, 217.
Bulblets, defined, 132.
Burdock burr, 35, 36, 52, 53, 95.
Burrs, description of, 52.
use of, to plant, 53.
as seed cases, 67, 68.
Buttercup, pistils and stamens of, 201
Buttonwood buds, 130, 131.
C
Cabbage leaves, 173.
Cabbage, skunk, 204.
Caladium, 163, 164.
Calyx (cup), described, 15.
position of, 18.
function of, 188.
defined, 189.
Carrion vine, 230, 231.
Carrot root, 102.
Carrot, wild, 246, 247.
Castor-oil plant, seed of, 72.
Cells, 139-143.
description of, 139.
passage of moisture through, 147, 148.
water supply of, 149.
functions of, 152.
loosening leafstalk, 185.
Cherry blossom, parts of, 37, 38, 188, 189, 218.
development into cherry, 37, 38, 189.
Cherry tree, branch of, 126.
buds of, 129.
Cherry, wild, 39.
Chestnut, burrs of, 67, 68.
seed leaves of, 87, 88.
leaves of, 161.
Chicory flower, pollen of, 197.
Chlorophyll (leaf green), described, 137.
function of, 151-161.
Chokecherries, 39, 40.
Clematis, seed appendages of, 58.
fruit clusters of, 59.
stem of, 115.
“Clock,” dandelion’s fruit, 35.
Clover, red and white, 117.
leaf of, 168.
a flower head, 243, 244, 247.
Coal, origin of, 152, 153.
Cocoanut, 69.
Coffee seed, a food, 91.
Color change in leaf, 185.
Coloring of fruit, function of, 42, 43, 50.
Columbine, plan of, 221.
spur of, 226.
Composite family, 248, 252, 254.
Corm, 105, 106.
Corn, seed of, 80, 88.
seed leaves of, 88.
stem of, 114, 117.
stalk of, 120, 121.
Corolla, position of, 15.
of apple blossom, 19.
function of, 188.
defined, 190.
Cottonwood seed, 61.
Cotyledons, see “seed leaves.”
Crane’s bill, 65, 66.
Crocus, bulb or underground stem of, 105, 150.
an early flower, 216.
Cup, green, see “calyx.”
Cyclamen, underground stem of, 105.
D
Daffodil, 216.
Daisy, pollen of, 196.
plan of, 249-251.
blue, 251.
flower head of, 252.
strap and tube flowers of, 254, 255.
Dandelion, puffball of, 35, 36, 95.
fruit cluster of, 60.
plan of, 247, 248.
flower head of, 252.
strap flowers of, 254, 255.
Dicotyledonous plants (plants with two seed leaves), 85-87.
Dodder, 108-110, 114, 123.
Dogwood, berries of, 42.
Dogwood blossom, plan of, 245.
Duckweed, 111.
Dust boxes (anthers), position of, 14, 227.
contents of, 17.
function of, 188.
varieties of, 193-195.
Dutchman’s breeches, 203.
E
Easter lily, building plan of, 191.
stamens of, 193.
description of, 218, 219.
Elm, seed of, 62.
Enchanter’s nightshade, stamen of, 195.
English ivy, 106, 107, 115, 116.
Eucalyptus, perspiration of, 149.
Evening primrose, a night-blooming
flower, 229, 230.
pollen of, 197.
Evergreen leaves, 184.
Evergreen plants, 171.
Everlasting, 255.
Eyes of potato, 104, 131.
F
False Solomon’s seal, 48.
Ferns, 215.
Fertilization, see “pollen.”
Fibrous roots, 102, 103.
Fir tree, trunk of, 121.
Fireweed, pod of, 58.
stamens and pistil of, 227, 228.
Flax plant, 110.
Fleshy root, 102-104.
Flower cluster, 245, 246.
Flower dust, see “pollen.”
Flower head, 244, 247-255.
Flower leaves, 192.
Flowering plants, 22.
Flowers, 187-255.
with many pistils, 201, 202.
with stamens only, 206-211.
with pistils only, 207-211, 250.
of trees, 209-211.
night-opening, 228-230.
design of odor of, 231.
Food of plants, 143-148, 150.
Forsythia, buds of, 129.
Foxglove, garden, 225.
Foxglove, yellow false, 112, 225, 226.
Fruit, the plant’s object, 24.
the seed holder, 33-36.
defined, 34, 94.
wild and cultivated, 39, 40.
varieties of, 52-55, 95.
function of, 95.
formed from pistil, 202.
Fruits and seeds, 9-73.
G
Garden foxglove, 225.
Geranium, wild, 65, 66, 220.
Golden-rod, fruit clusters of, 59.
stamens of, 194, 195.
plan of, 252, 253.
description of, 254.
Grass of Parnassus, pistil of, 200.
Grass plants, classified, 88.
H
Hairy leaves, design of, 170-175.
Hanging roots, 107.
Haws, 49.
Hemlock cone, 62.
Hemlock tree, 171, 184.
Hobblebush, leaves of, 215.
buds of, 130.
flower cluster of, 245, 246.
Holly leaves, 174, 175.
Hop hornbeam fruit, 62.
Horse chestnut, buds of, 126, 128.
Hyacinth, 216.
I
Indian corn, see “corn.”
Indian cucumber root, 44, 45.
Indian pipe, 112.
Ivy, English, 106, 107, 115, 116.
Ivy, Japanese, 116.
Ivy, poison, 107, 115, 116.
J
Jack-in-the-pulpit, flower and berry of, 47.
underground stem of, 105, 123.
leaf of, 214.
an early spring flower, 216.
Japanese ivy, 116.
Jewelweed, blossom of, 222.
pod of, 65, 66.
L
Lady’s eardrop, 66.
Lady’s slipper, 222.
Laurel flower, pollen of, 197.
Leaf blade, described, 136, 137.
position of, 161.
Leaf green (chlorophyll) described, 137.
function of, 151-161.
Leaf mouths, function of, 146, 159, 160, 171-173.
perspiration of, 148, 149.
Leaflets, defined, 168.
Leafstalk, use of, 115.
a bud protector, 131.
defined, 136.
Leaves, 135-185.
protection of, 126, 127.
buds on, 132, 133.
parts of, 135-137.
edges of, 135, 136, 168.
functions of, 145.
perspiration of, 146, 149, 150, 170-173.
as storehouses, 150.
position of, 160, 161.
shapes of, 161, 167, 168.
effect on roots, 162.
net-veined, 165, 166.
parallel-veined, 166.
covering on, 170-175.
hairy, 170-172, 175.
woolly, 172.
as traps, 176-183.
fall of, 184, 185.
color change of, 185.
Life everlasting, 171, 172.
Life substance of plants (protoplasm), 140, 141.
Lily, classified, 88.
underground stem of, 123, 150.
flower leaves of, 191.
plan of, 191, 192.
pollen of, 196.
pistil of, 197, 198.
development of, 199.
coloring of, 226.
Lily, Easter, plan of, 191, 218, 219.
Lily family, 45, 219.
Liverwort, 203, 219.
Locust leaf, 168.
M
Mallow, stamens of, 195.
Mangrove, fruit and stem of, 92-94.
Maple, keys of, 86, 210.
winged seed of, 61, 86.
seed leaves of, 90.
branch of, 126.
buds of, 129.
leaf of, 136, 165, 167.
flower of, 210.
Maple, red, 92, 127.
Maple, silver, 210.
Maple, sugar, 92, 210.
Maple, swamp, 210.
Marsh marigold, a spring flower, 203.
plan of, 218.
pistils of, 219.
Midrib of leaf, 137.
Milkweed, pod of, 35, 95.
seedbox of, 57.
seeds of, 61.
Mistletoe, 110, 111.
Monocotyledonous plants (plants with one seed leaf), 88.
Morning-glory, seed leaves of, 78.
seed of, 83, 90.
development of, 112, 113.
stem of, 114, 115, 117, 123.
Mountain laurel, buds of, 129.
arrangement of stamens of, 226, 227.
Mullein leaves, 170, 175.
N
Nasturtium spur, 226.
Nepenthes leaf, 178, 179.
Nettles, 175.
Net-veined leaves, 165, 166.
Nightshade, enchanter’s, 195.
Nightshade, garden, 115.
Nourishment of plant, 150.
O
Oak, seed of, 68.
root of, 145.
leaf of, 167.
Oat seed, a food, 91.
Orchid family, 107, 223, 224.
Orchids, 123, 223, 224, 226.
Ovary, see “seedbox.”
P
Palm tree, trunk of, 121.
Pansy, plan of, 220.
Parallel-veined leaves, 166.
Parasitic plants, 108-111.
Parsley family, 247.
Partridge berries, 45, 46, 51.
Partridge vine, 46, 184, 231.
Pea, seed of, 80, 87, 90, 242.
seed leaves of, 87.
stem of, 115.
pod of, 241, 242.
Pea blossom, stamens of, 194, 241, 242.
pistil of, 200, 241, 242.
analysis of, 240-242.
Pea family, 54, 240.
Peach, compared with apple, 36.
blossom of, 38.
Persian origin of, 40.
buds of, 129.
Pear, compared with apple, 31.
blossom of, 32.
buds of, 129.
Pear, wild, 118.
Peony seeds, 75, 76.
Perspiration of plants, 148, 149, 160.
Petals (handkerchiefs), used as signals, 17, 18, 188, 192, 221,
223, 226.
functions of, 188.
Pine, cone of, 62.
classified, 88, 89.
leaves of, 171, 184.
flower of, 197.
Pins with dust boxes, see “stamens.”
Pins without dust boxes, see “pistils.”
Pistils (pins without dust boxes), described, 15, 18, 197-202.
function of, 188, 198, 199.
defined, 190.
varieties of, 200.
flowers with many, 201, 202.
fruit formed from, 202.
position of, 227, 228, 248.
of strawberry, 233, 234.
of berries, 236.
Pit or stone, 37.
Pitcher plant, 176-178.
Pith, defined, 120, 121.
Plants, flowering, 22.
object of life of, 22, 23.
use of, to world, 26, 27.
service of, to animals, 26, 27, 156, 157.
young, 75-98.
nourishment of, 75, 76, 77, 150, 156-160.
with two seed leaves (dicotyledons), 85-87.
with one seed leaf (monocotyledons), 88.
with many seed leaves (polycotyledons), 88, 89.
parasitic, 108-111.
development of, 112, 113.
absorption of water by, 147.
perspiration of, 148, 149, 160.
as air purifiers, 151-153, 158, 159.
breathing of, 158-160.
storing of food in, 185, 216, 217.
protection of, 214, 215.
Plants and animals, difference between, 154, 155.
Plum, compared with apple, 36.
blossom of, 38.
Plum, wild beach, 40.
Pods, 35, 54, 55, 58, 65-67, 241, 242.
Poison ivy, 107, 115, 116.
Pollen (flower dust), described, 14, 196-199.
carriers of, 17, 18, 189, 207, 213, 223, 224, 226-230, 233.
effect on pistil, 18, 20.
fertilizing power of, 18, 20, 196-199.
transportation of, 18, 207, 211, 213, 226, 227, 229-231, 233, 250.
function of, 188, 198, 199.
varieties of, 196, 197.
defined, 199, 200.
Polycotyledonous plants (plants with many seed leaves), 88, 89.
Polygala, 222.
Poplar tassels, 211.
Poppy seed, dispersal of, 70, 71.
Potato, a stem, 104, 131.
eyes of, 131, 174.
Potato, sweet, 102.
Prickles, 174, 175.
Primrose, evening, 197, 229, 230.
Protoplasm (life substance), 140, 141.
Puffballs, 35, 36, 59, 95.
Pussy willow, 129.
tassels of, 205-207.
Q
Quince leaf, 135, 136, 137, 165.
R
Radish root, 102.
Raspberry, development of, 237-239.
Red baneberry, 49.
Red clover, stem of, 117.
Red maple, seed of, 92.
leaves of, 127.
buds of, 127.
Rhubarb plant, 164.
Robin’s plantain, 251, 252.
Root branches, 162-164.
Roots, origin of, 81, 113.
hairs of, 81, 99-102, 104, 123, 143.
function of, 99-103.
fibrous, 102, 103.
fleshy, 102-104.
as food, 103, 104.
above-ground, 106-111.
varieties of, 106-112.
hanging, 107.
underground, 111.
water, 111, 112.
absorbing capacity of, 146.
spreading of, 162, 163.
position of, 163, 164.
Roots and stems, 99-122.
Rootstocks, function of, 106, 217.
Rose, petals of, 32, 33.
stem of, 120.
Rose family, 31, 32, 36, 40, 235.
Rose hip, 33, 34.
Rose mallow, 258.
Rose of Jericho, pod of, 71.
Rose, wild, 32.
S
Saint John’s-wort, pistil of, 200.
Saxifrage, pistil of, 200.
Sea pinks, 228, 258.
Seaweed, 258.
Seed sailboats (appendages), 56-60, 207.
Seedbox (ovary), described, 15, 18.
function of, 188.
in berries, 236-239.
Seed coat, 80-84, 86, 113.
Seed leaf, plants with one (monocotyledons), 88.
of corn, 88.
Seed leaves (cotyledons), description of, 78, 81-90.
plants with two (dicotyledons), 85-87.
of acorn, 87.
of pea, 87.
of walnut, 87, 88.
of chestnut, 87, 88.
plants with many (polycotyledons), 88, 89.
development of, 113.
number of, 120, 121, 165.
Seeds, growth of, in the apple, 18-20.
the object of the plant’s life, 24.
importance of, to world, 27.
protection of, 28, 29.
reason for scattering of, 50, 51.
transportation of, 52-64, 69-73.
winged, 61
shooting, 63-67.
nourishment of, 75-77.
planting of, 79-87, 95, 96.
germination of, 80-89, 92, 198, 199.
as food, 89-91.
as storehouses, 90, 91.
Shin leaf flower, stamen of, 193.
Shooting seeds, 64-67.
Silver maple, 210.
Skunk cabbage, description of, 204.
Snowberry, stem of, 117.
Snowdrop, 216.
Solomon’s seal, fruit of, 48.
underground stem of, 105, 216.
scars of, 105, 106.
Solomon’s seal, false, 48.
Speckled alder, 173.
Spice bush buds, 129.
Spikenard, 49.
Spring beauty, 203, 216.
Spur, 226.
Squash, seed of, 80, 85, 86, 90.
Squirting cucumber, 67.
Stamens (pins with dust boxes), description of, 14.
function of, 188.
defined, 190.
varieties of, 193-195.
position of, 248.
Steeple bush, leaves of, 172.
Stems, development of, 81, 112, 113.
of bean plant, 96.
underground, 104-106, 150, 216-219.
varieties of, 104, 112-120.
use of, to plant, 113-117.
habits of, 117-119.
hairy, 118, 119.
sticky, 118.
parts of, 120.
as water carriers, 146-148, 163.
Stick-tight, 55.
Stone or pit of fruits, 37.
Strap flowers, 247-255.
Strawberry, stem of, 117.
pistil of, 201.
development of, 233, 234.
description of, 238.
Sugar maple, seeds of, 92.
blossom of, 210.
Sumac, 43.
Sun (Sunbeam), factor in plant life, 151-161.
Sundew, leaf of, 182, 183.
pistil of, 200.
Sunflower, plan of, 255.
Sunflower plant, perspiration of, 149.
Swamp alder, 173.
Swamp maple, 210.
Sweet potato root, 102.
T
Thistle, 56, 59, 118, 174, 254, 255.
Thistle down, 56.
Thorn, 49.
use of, to plant, 117, 118.
Thorn apple, 199.
Tick trefoil pod, 54, 55.
Ticks, transportation of, 55.
Tiger lily buds, 132.
Touch-me-not pod, 65-67.
Trailing arbutus, a spring flower, 203, 209.
plan of, 217, 218.
Transportation of pollen, 18, 207, 211, 213, 226, 227, 229-231,
233, 250.
Transportation of seeds, 52-64, 69-73.
Traps of plants, 176-183.
Trees, flowers of, 209, 211.
Trunk, a stem, 119.
section of, 121, 147.
Tube flowers, 249-255.
Tuber, defined, 217.
Tulip, stem of, 148.
parts of, 193.
an early spring flower, 216.
Turnip root, 102.
U
Underground roots, 111.
Underground stems, 104, 105, 150, 216, 217, 219.
V
Veinlets, described, 137.
function of, 160.
Veins, described, 137.
function of, 160.
significance of, 165.
Venus’s flytrap, leaf of, 181.
Violet, a spring flower, 203, 209.
plan of, 220.
spur of, 226.
Violet, yellow, 203.
Virginia creeper, 116.
W
Wake-robin, a spring flower, 216.
plan of, 219.
Walnut, seed leaves of, 87, 88.
seed of, 90.
a fruit, 95.
Water lily, stem of, 116, 117.
Water roots, 111, 112.
Wheat seed, a food, 91.
White baneberry, 49.
White clover, stem of, 117.
White elm, flower cluster of, 210.
Wild beach plum, 40.
Wild carrot, 246, 247.
Wild geranium, plan of, 220.
seed dispersal of, 65, 66.
Wild ginger, a spring flower, 216.
plan of, 219.
seedbox of, 219.
Wild pear, 118.
Wild rose, 33.
Willow, seed appendages of, 61.
roots of, 111, 112.
Willow herb, pod of, 58.
seeds of, 61.
Wintergreen, leaves of, in winter, 184.
berries of, 49.
Witch-hazel, flower of, 63.
nut of, 63-65.
seed of, 64.
Wood lily, stem of, 105.
Woolly leaves, 172.
Y
Yellow adder’s tongue, an early spring flower, 203, 216.
plan of, 219.
Yellow false foxglove, 112, 225, 226.
Yellow violet, 203.
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