said the little girl, sitting up quite straight. "And I like single
flowers, 'specially lilies, and wild roses; but I think double flowers
are nice, too, because they seem dressed up, like folks--queens and
princesses, all with nice dresses--velvet and chiffon and lacey stuff."
"Why, that is just what they are, Prue. They are dressed up, and, of
course, the more anything, or anybody, is dressed up the less they are
really like themselves. The petals and sepals of a flower are really
fine clothes, you know, just as you sometimes play they are, when you
make hollyhock dolls, and it wears them for just about the same reason
that we wear ours. It might grow and be useful without them, but it
would not be very attractive, and some of its friends and servants
might pass by without seeing it."
"Servants! But flowers don't really have servants. That must be just a
story."
"No--at least, it is all very true. Flowers are like people in very
many ways. They really have servants and friends, and some of them live
off other flowers and plants, and some of them eat and sleep, very much
as we do. I will tell you something about that another time."
II
THE FLOWER HAS MANY SERVANTS
IT was about a week after this that little Prue was picking some
sweet-pease for the table when Davy came along with the Chief Gardener.
"The servants are busy this morning," said the Chief Gardener.
"Do you mean me?" asked little Prue. "I am trying to pick some flowers,
but there are so many bees around that I'm afraid."
"Those are the servants I mean. I do not think they will hurt you if
you are careful. They are only collecting their wages, and working at
the same time."
Davy and Prue looked close.
"What do you mean by their working?" asked Davy. "Do you mean for the
flower, or for themselves?"
"For both. Watch this bee. You see, he pushes open the flower for
honey, but to get it he has to cover his legs with the pollen from the
anthers, which are placed down in this little lower part called a keel,
just where his legs and body will be covered. Then he comes out and
goes to another flower and carries this pollen, and really rubs it on
the stigma there as he crawls in and out, and takes more pollen, and
so goes on from one to another--a real servant, doing a real duty and
getting his pay as he goes."
"But he doesn't have to do it. The pollen would fall on the stigma
anyway, wouldn't it?"
"It might with the sweet-pea, but even if it did, the pollen from the
same flower is not as good as the pollen from another flower from a
different plant, and the seed would be poor and the plants would grow
weaker every year. There are many insects that act as servants to
the flowers, and the wind is one of the servants, too. It shakes the
corn-tassel so that the pollen falls on the silk and makes the ear, and
it carries the pollen of one stalk to the silk of another--sometimes
from one field to another."
"But, of course, the bee doesn't know that he does it," said Prue, who
was still very intently watching the little servants of the sweet-pease.
"I am not so certain of that," the Chief Gardener said musingly. "The
flower must know, for it dresses in bright colors so that the bee may
see it, and offers honey as pay for his work. And if the flower knows,
why shouldn't the bee?"
"But don't you think it might all just happen so?" asked Davy.
"I don't think anything in nature just 'happens so,' Davy, and I am
sure that the bee's work for the flower doesn't, for there are too
many flowers that would have no seed and would die out if it were not
for the bees that carry the pollen, and most of these flowers have
grown just to fit in every way the especial little bee, or big bee, or
insect, that comes to work for them. There are some flowers, like the
sweet-pea, that the bee cannot get into without getting pollen on his
legs, and there are others that drop it upon his back. Some flowers
have stamens that wither before the pistil is ready for the pollen. In
such flowers the little servants go from one to the other--from a new
flower to an old one--carrying the pollen which would not be of any use
in the flower where it grew."
"And is that really all that the flower's pretty color and sweet smell
and delicious honey are for?" asked little Prue, "just to get bees to
work for it?"
"No, Prue, I don't think so. I think all the world of nature is
harmony, like sweet music, and the flowers with their beauty and
sweetness are part of it, but I think that just as we may attract
friends and good servants by kindness and offering something in return,
so the flowers attract the bees and butterflies, and even a little girl
and boy to keep the weeds away. The more a flower depends on an insect
to carry its pollen, the gayer or sweeter that flower always is. The
orchids, which are almost the finest flowers in the world, seem to be
made especially for the insects, and they could not do without them,
any more than the insects could do without the flowers."
"And is that what makes some flowers such funny shapes, too?"
"I think it is. The foxglove, and the horse mint, and many others,
have curious shapes and forms, just to fit their little helpers, and
the milkweed has a funny little saddle-bag which it hangs to the bee's
feet, so that he can carry it to another plant. There is another kind
of a milkweed which is very cruel, for it attracts small insects by its
odor, and when they come they are caught by a sticky substance and held
until the weed sucks them down and really eats them, much as we eat our
food. So, you see, plants are a good deal like people, just as I told
you the other day."
"You said they could sleep, too."
"Yes, your rose-moss closes up every night, shuts its eyes just as you
do, and rests. Many flowers close at night, and some even droop their
heads quite low, like the bird, which sleeps with its head beneath its
wing."
III
A FLOWER MAY REALLY REASON
HOW beautiful was the September garden! The wild sunflowers were all
in bloom like a wall of gold. A bunch of black-eyed Susans at the
corner of the house seemed trying to imitate its large cousins, and
was just as bright and yellow, too, in a small way. The little Susans
had not been planted, but had strayed in out of the field somewhere,
perhaps longing to be with people. A row of bright red cockscombs made
a crimson line of plumes down one side of a garden-path, and just
beyond them Davy's third planting of beans was in full bearing. Prue's
pinks and sweet-pease bloomed on and on, and her alyssums and the other
sweets became sweeter every day.
"Do you think all these things like to be together?" Prue asked, one
afternoon, as they sat looking at them from the shade of the peach-tree.
"I think those that grow well do," said Davy. "They seem to, anyway."
"And they do, Davy," said the Chief Gardener. "A plant that doesn't
like a place will not grow in it, and in the woods and fields we only
find those plants together which like that particular spot. Down below
the hillside yonder you will find golden-rod and several kinds of tall
blue and white daisies and grasses that all belong there, and seem very
happy together. They would not grow well in the wet woods, and would
soon die out, but there are other plants that grow and tangle and are
happiest where the ground is damp and the shade overhead. So, you see,
there we have another way that plants are like people--they have their
proper company, and, perhaps, their societies and friendships. I am
sure they have their friendships, for there are certain little plants,
and big ones, too, that you will nearly always find together. Violets
and spring-beauties and adder-tongues must love each other, I am sure,
for you seldom see one without the others, and there are certain
vines, like the Virginia creeper and the poison-ivy, that are nearly
always together, though why the Virginia creeper should care for the
poison-ivy I don't see. Perhaps it doesn't seem poison to the creeper,
but only to us."
"It seemed poison enough to me," said Davy, "when I got a dose of it
last year. It nearly itched me to death."
[Illustration: "BEWARE OF THE VINE WITH THE THREE-PART LEAF"]
"Yes, it is terrible stuff, and little folks, and big ones, too,
have to be very careful, for it looks very much like its friend, the
creeper, only that its compound leaf is divided into three parts
instead of five. You can always tell by that, and you must always
_beware of the vine with the three-part leaf_."
"Do poison-ivy and Virginia creeper belong to the same family?" asked
Davy.
"No, though they look so much alike. The poison-ivy belongs to the
Sumach family, while the creeper belongs to the Grape family. The
families are quite close together, but are separate. Often members of
different families are better friends than members of the same family,
and that is still another way that plants are like people."
"Do you suppose the poison-ivy knows that it is poison?" asked Prue,
who liked to believe that plants were really _just_ like people.
"Perhaps it does. We can never be quite sure how much a plant knows. I
told you once how I believed they could feel and hear, and even see. I
am almost sure that the dandelion can reason."
Davy looked interested, and the Chief Gardener went on.
"You will remember, Davy, how when the dandelions first bloomed they
had quite tall stems. Then we mowed the lawn, and when they tried to
bloom again the stems were shorter. We mowed again, and the stems
grew still shorter, and so they became shorter and shorter each time,
until they bloomed flat against the ground, so low that we could not
mow them. They were bound to bloom, and they did bloom, and then all
at once almost in a day they shot up long pale stems with balls of
white-winged seeds that were ready when we mowed again to float away
at a touch or a puff, to be ready to sprout and grow another year. The
dandelion is bound to spread its seed. By and by it learns that the
lawn-mower cannot cut below a certain level. So it blooms below the
lawn-mower's cutting-wheel, and then when it is ready to seed, it pops
up as high as ever it can, and stands waiting for the mower to come
around and help scatter its seed. Perhaps it doesn't really reason, but
it does something exactly like it, and there are people in the world
who would be happier if they could do the same thing."
[Illustration: THE DANDELION IS BOUND TO SPREAD ITS SEED]
And just then big Prue came out into the garden, and they all sat on
the bench under the peach-tree, and watched the sun going down, away
off over the purple hills. And they thought how the summer was nearly
over, and how soon the glory of the little garden would be fading, and
how the snow would be sifting down among the withered leaves.
[Illustration: "SO IT BLOOMS BELOW THE LAWN-MOWER'S CUTTING-WHEEL"]
IV
SOME FLOWERS LIVE OFF OTHER FLOWERS AND PLANTS
SO summer with its song and its blossom came to an end. Autumn clad in
gold and purple came across the land, and the gentle haze of Indian
summer lay upon the fields. From the banks of golden-rod below the
hill, Prue and Davy filled jars and vases, and one day they brought
in great bunches all linked and bound together with something like a
tangle of golden thread.
The Chief Gardener was not at home that day, so they brought their
discovery to big Prue to explain.
"Why," she said, "that is dodder, or love-vine. It is what is called a
parasite, for it has no root in the ground, but lives from the plant
it grows on."
Then she showed them where the small, tough little rootlets were really
embedded in the stalk of the golden-rod from which it drew its strength
and life.
"Oh," said Prue, "that is what Papa meant when he told us once that
some flowers lived off other flowers and plants, just as some people
live off other people."
Big Prue nodded.
"There are a good many such plants," she said. "The mistletoe we get
for Christmas grows on several sorts of trees. Its seed lodges under
the bark and sprouts there, just as it would in the ground. Then the
wood grows up around the root, and the mistletoe becomes almost a
part of the tree. Then there are many kinds of mosses, and the Indian
pipe--that white, waxy flower which you found in the woods not long
ago, and thought you had found a flowering mushroom. It is a sort of a
relation of the mushroom, for it springs from damp, decaying leaves,
and has no real root, but it is more of a parasite, for it feeds mainly
on roots of living trees and plants. This dodder blooms and drops its
seeds to the ground, where they sprout, but as soon as it finds a weed
to cling to, the root dies and it lives only on the weed."
"Why do they call it love-vine?" asked little Prue.
Her mother took the long golden tendril and twined it about her slender
white finger. Then she told them the story of
V
THE PRINCE AND THE THREAD OF GOLD
"THERE was once a prince," she began, "who lived in a far country
between blue seas. And all the land the prince owned, and a great
palace, but he was not happy, because there was a little fisher girl
more beautiful than the sunrise, who would not come and dwell in his
palace and be his princess.
"When this fisher girl saw the prince coming toward her, she would
dance away laughing, like a ripple of sunlight on the water, and there
were some who said she was not a real child, but a sea-fairy, for she
had been found as a babe by the fisher's wife, cast up on the sand,
after a great storm.
"But the prince did not care whether she was a human being or not.
He thought only of her, as each day she grew taller and always more
beautiful. He went every morning to the fisher's hut to beg that they
would give her to him, and this they would have been glad to do had
Dodora been willing, but always she laughed and danced away when they
spoke of it, and sometimes they did not see her again until evening.
"But one morning, when she was eighteen years old, and they spoke to
her, she said, laughing:
"'Tell the prince to tie a knot in the thread of love. If he will tie a
knot in the thread of love it will hold me fast,' and again she danced
away, while her laugh came as the tinkle of the tide among the pebbles
on a still evening.
"So when the prince came that day they told him, and he went away
sadly, for he thought she was only playing with him for her amusement.
"But that night, as he walked alone in the moonlight by the shore, he
suddenly saw on the sand in front of him a radiant fairy, spinning on
a silver spinning-wheel a wonderful thread of gold. Without daring to
breathe he stood and looked at her, and then he saw that it was from
the rays of moonlight that she was spinning the thread. All at once she
rose and came to where he was standing.
"'Here is the thread of love,' she said to him, and then she showed
him how to tie the true lover's knot in it. 'With this you may win our
Dodora,' the fairy added, and then suddenly like a breath of perfume
she was gone, leaving the thread of gold in the prince's hands.
"And all that night the prince tied and retied the true lover's knot,
as the fairy had showed him, and next morning he hurried with it to the
fisherman's cottage where Dodora lived. And when Dodora saw him coming,
she did not dance away as she had always done before, but went forward
to meet him, and took his hand. Then suddenly she snatched the golden
thread from him and ran, with the prince after her. She ran fast, but
he was about to overtake her, when Dodora dropped the knot into the
weeds, and then all at once she stopped, for the wonderful thread had
suddenly become a great tangle of gold that held Dodora fast, and she
could not get away. So the prince overtook her, and led her to his
palace, where they lived happily for a long time. And the thread of
love grew as a wonderful vine that had no root in the earth, but twined
about the weeds and spread over the country in many places. Some
called it Dodora, after the princess, and this was changed at last to
'dodder' by those who did not know. Others called it golden thread,
and still others called it love-vine, and tied true lover's knots in
it which they threw over their shoulders on moonlight nights. If these
knots grew they won their sweethearts. They did not always grow, but
about the palace of the prince the vine flourished in a golden mass,
and the prince, never forgetting the wonderful night when it had been
spun for him out of moonbeams, let it grow through all the world, to
become the golden thread of love."
OCTOBER
OCTOBER
I
SEEDS ARE MADE TO BE PLANTED
OCTOBER brought seedtime in the little garden. Many seeds had ripened
during the summer, and Prue had already gathered some of the tiny black
flakes from the opened pods of her precious pinks, and Davy had saved
some seed pease. But October was the real harvest-time. The children
took a lot of white envelopes, and upon them Davy printed the names of
all the seeds they expected to gather. Into these envelopes they put
carefully the different little black and brown and white seeds after
they had picked and blown the husks all away, so, as Davy said, they
would look just like seeds bought at the store.
And some of the seeds were big flat beans, or little long round beans;
and some, like the sweet-pease, were very round, like shot; and some,
like the cockscomb seeds, were tiny and shiny and black and so slippery
that Prue lost more than she got in her envelope, though she got
enough, for there is _such a lot of seed_ on a cockscomb. Some seeds
were in funny little pods that snapped when you touched them, and sent
the little black or brown shot flying in every direction, like a charge
out of a bomb, and these had to be gathered very carefully. Then there
were seeds with little wings, made to help them to fly, and there were
seeds with little claws made to catch and hold on, so they would be
carried and planted in many places. But these were mostly weed seeds,
and were only gathered because they clung to the children's clothes,
and stuck so fast that it was hard to pick them off.
[Illustration: "THEY CLING TO EVERYTHING THAT PASSES"]
"You see," said the Chief Gardener, who was watching them, "everything
has a way of taking care of itself. Just as I told you about the
dandelion, the plants have something which is very much like reason,
or instinct, to guide them. These zinnia seeds do not have the little
prongs, because the zinnia does not need them. It is a garden flower,
and the seed will be taken care of. But those brown two-pronged little
things you are picking off your coat-sleeve came from its very near
relation, the Spanish needle, which is a weed, and must look out
for its own planting. Those wild sunflowers turn top-side down, and
the little yellow birds that peck and chirp about them all day are
scattering the seed so thickly that next spring the garden will be
covered with the young plants. The big tame sunflower doesn't take care
of itself nearly so well. Of course, you remember how the dandelion
seeds go drifting on the wind, while the thistle-down that goes
floating by is carrying seed to some farmer's field, or fence corner.
Then there are the maple seeds, which have two wings, or keys, as they
are called, and there are many of these key seeds that are tossed here
and there when the wind blows. The wind and the birds are the servants
that sow the wild seeds, just as the bees and butterflies helped to
make them."
"But there are some thistles," said little Prue, "that are not blown by
the wind. They have stickery balls, and I make baskets out of them."
"Those are burs, and they are carried by sheep and cows, and by people.
They cling to everything that passes. I have seen a horse's mane so
full of them that it had to be cut off. The burdock is a very bad weed,
and there ought to be a story about it, but I suppose if there was
one, it must have been so unpleasant that it has been forgotten. There
are many other weeds almost as bad. There are seeds with all kinds of
hooks and claws to grab and stick, and there are many that are carried
in the dirt which clings to the feet of animals and men and even birds."
"I should think some weeds would make their seeds look like flower
seeds, to fool people."
"Well, that is just about what they do. There are cockle seeds in the
wheat, and so nearly the same size that the threshing-machine will not
take them out, and there are many little plants in the grass that have
seeds so nearly like those of the grass itself that we are obliged to
sow them with the grass seed. So, you see, men, too, become servants of
the wise, persevering weeds. Certain beans and grains have been carried
by water, and have been known to be brought across stretches of the sea
to be scattered and planted upon a new shore."
"How many kinds of seeds are there?" asked Davy.
"About as many as plants, Davy."
"I don't mean that. I mean how many principal kinds--like flowers, you
know--they are Exogens and Endogens."
"Oh, I see. You mean classes. Well, I suppose we might say two, fleshy
and dry. Then we might divide the dry into seeds and nuts, and the
fleshy into fruits and vegetables."
Davy and Prue were both thinking.
"I suppose my beans are dry," Davy said at last.
"Yes, of course."
"But we ate them green, and they were not dry then."
"That was before they were ripe. There are a number of things that
are fleshy when eaten green, that become pods or hulls when the fruit
is really ready to gather. Of course, there are fruits and nuts and
vegetables that, like flowers, are hard to put in any class. Take the
almond--you would call that a nut, of course."
"I just love almonds," said little Prue.
"And aren't they nuts?" asked Davy.
"Yes, the almond is a nut, but you would hardly call the peach a nut;
yet they grow exactly alike, except that the outside of the almond is
tough and not fit to eat. The walnut is a nut, too, of course, but the
hull is quite fleshy, even after the nut is ripe; and there are certain
sorts of foreign plums that have a sweet kernel, so they are really
fruit and nut in one. But I think we shall have to go nutting next
week, and then we can tell more what we think about them."
"Nutting! Oh, yes, we'll go nutting!" cried little Prue. "And we'll
take baskets, and Mamma, and stay all day and bring home just bushels."
"We must take plenty of dinner in the baskets," said Davy, who
remembered one time when the dinner had been less than he thought it
should be. So then they ran into the house to put away their envelopes
of seeds, and to tell the news.
II
THERE ARE BITTER NUTS AND SWEET ONES
HOW splendid it was in the October woods. Some of the trees were almost
bare, some of them were a fine russet brown, and some were all crimson
and gold; and the gold was so beautiful against the blue sky that it
seemed to Davy and Prue that October, after all, might be the very best
month of the year.
There was a brook that wound through the woods. On both sides of it
were bottom lands, and here the hickory and walnut and butternut
trees grew. Near the hillsides there were groves of hazel with their
brown clusters, half opened by the frost, ripe for gathering. Camp
was made near the brook, and then all hurried to the nut-trees; the
children kicking their feet through the rustling leaves that covered
the ground. The Chief Gardener found quite a large section of a young
tree which he put on his shoulder for a battering-ram. Then he walked
several steps, and butted one end of it against a tall hickory-tree,
and down showered the nuts, clattering in the leaves--the hulls
bursting and flying in all directions.
Then how the children scrambled and gathered.
"Let's clear the leaves away first, next time," said Davy, "so they
will be easier to find."
And this they did, and so they went from tree to tree, gathering
hickory-nuts, large and small, and walnuts, butternuts, and chestnuts,
and these they emptied into sacks they had brought in the little wagon
that was not hitched far away.
By and by, Davy spied a patch of hazel, and each with a basket, Prue
and he gathered until they were tired, and it was lunch-time.
How very hungry they were! Is there really anything like nutting to
make a little boy and girl hungry? And there was plenty of luncheon,
this time. Davy ate until he did not care to get up right away, but was
glad to lean back against a tree, and talk, while the Chief Gardener
smoked and little Prue and big Prue put away the things, and hulled
some of the hazelnuts, which little Prue said seemed to be more hulls
than nuts, for there was only about enough to cover the bottom of one
basket when they were all hulled.