Early in the spring the snowdrops and crocuses peep out, and then they
go away.
We do not think much about it, for other flowers have come in their
places.
Spring beauties and bloodroots shine in the woods, and then they go
away. But the mandrakes have come with their umbrella leaves, and then
the columbines and roses ask for a welcome.
After awhile we can find no more mandrakes and columbines, only yellow
apples and brown seed-pods.
[Illustration: [Leaves]]
[Illustration: [Leaves]]
Jack-in-the-Pulpit jumps up quite early in the summer, and then we
cannot find him, only in the late summer we sometimes come across little
clusters of bright red berries lying on the ground.
We would scarcely suspect them of having any relation to Jack, yet they
are his berries. But what has become of Jack?
In the autumn the rose leaves fall off, and there is left only red stems
and red berries.
The morning-glory vine wilts and turns black at the first frost; it
sinks to the ground and we see it no more, or else its stems linger
brown and hard for a time, but in the end it all disappears. What has
become of it?
And the nasturtiums—what a wreck the frost makes of them! The leaves are
wilted and black; the stems, too, are soft and lie flat on the ground.
Why, you say, the frost has killed them. But that does not at all tell
what has become of them. Besides, the frost did not kill the snowdrops
and crocuses and blood roots and spring beauties nor Jack-in-the-Pulpit
nor the umbrella leaves of the mandrakes. Yet they are all gone. All we
can find of Jack and the mandrakes are red berries and yellow apples.
Not a sign of the snowdrops or spring beauties or crocuses is left.
If you will just step down with me under the earth a few inches I will
show you something.
Make believe you are a gnome or a fairy and can see as well in the dark
earth as anywhere else and come along. Now look about.
Did you ever dream of anything so cunning in all your life? Everywhere
and everywhere old mother earth is packed full of little white and brown
bulbs.
[Illustration: [Flower]]
There they are as snug as peas in a pod, thousands of them, in every
direction as far as you can see.
And besides these bulbs, there are thick, fleshy root stems, red and
brown and yellow, everywhere and everywhere. Do you want to know who
they are?
They are our little friends of the early summer,—snowdrops and crocuses
and spring beauties and dogtooth violets; mandrakes, too, and
Jack-in-the-Pulpit.
These bulbs and thick roots are full of plant food; and this is where
the plant has gone to. It has curled up, so to speak, in these bulbs and
roots and gone to sleep till next spring. Then it will wake up. It will
hardly wait for the snow to go off before it pushes out a bud. The
snowdrop does not wait, but sometimes blossoms right under the snow. In
a few days the woods that looked so dead and bare are as gay as you
please. That is because the plants sleeping in the bulbs and thick
underground stems have waked up. They have eaten the rich food stored up
there and have grown like magic. Up into the sunshine they spring; they
wave sweet flowers; they call the little insects that have ventured out
to come and taste their nectar and bring them pollen.
Their leaves are green and delicate, but they work hard, for the plants
have used up the food in the bulbs or in the thick underground stems,
and the leaves and roots must make new bulb material or store away more
food in the thick underground parts.
It is spring, and the air is moist and warm. It rains often, and the
plants have all the water they need.
What fun it must be to come out in the world! What joy to unfold bright
flowers in the shadowy woods! They dance on their stems and ripen their
seeds; before the slow roses have thought of opening their eyes, the
bulb people and the underground-stem people have done all their work of
growing. The seeds are ripe and ready to be scattered; new bulbs are
packed full of plant food, and fresh food is stored in the thick
underground stems. The bulb people and the underground-stem people have
had a good time.
They were up early in the summer and saw the sweet, fresh world; their
leaves worked hard, and their work is all done now.
They are tired and want to sleep. They fear the heat and dryness of the
summer. They do not want to be crowded by the other plants that are
beginning to look out everywhere.
“We will go to sleep and let the other plants have our places; we have
had our share of the air and the water and the dear sunshine,” they seem
to say. “We have caught the sunbeams and stored them away in our bulbs
and roots, and we will now rest.”
[Illustration: [Flower]]
So they go to sleep. They open the channels from the leaves to the bulbs
and the underground stems, and then all the living part of the leaves
passes quickly down into the part that lies underground. There is only
left the hard framework of the leaves. This is not alive; it never was
alive. The living part of the leaf built it for a house to live and do
its work in; now the house is empty: the living part has run down into
the bulb or the underground stem. The part of the leaf that is left soon
falls to pieces, as any old abandoned house will do. It falls on the
ground; the rain soaks it, and it crumbles apart. It changes into food
for other plants. It is not lost; it is taken up by other plants and
again built into good plant material.
[Illustration: [Seed-pods]]
So it is with the seed-pods; when the seeds fall out, the part that is
left behind is not alive. All the living part has gone out of the dry
pods down into the bulbs or the underground stems; and the pods, too,
crumble to pieces and make good food for other plants.
But the seeds are alive. They lie in the earth and wait for the time to
come when they may wake up and make new plants with young bulbs or thick
underground stems.
But how about the roses? Do they not die in the fall? Why, what are you
thinking of? Do they not wake up next spring and cover their stems with
leaves and flowers? Dead bushes could not do so.
You see how it is. The leaves work all summer long. They store up food
in the roots and the stems. When the frost comes and pinches them, they
know it is time to stop work and go to sleep for the winter. They have
roots down in the ground. And now you know as well as I do how they
manage it.
When the leaves have done their work and fed the flowers and the stems
and the seeds, and when the stems and the roots are stored full of food,
the leaves stop working. The green little cells that made them so bright
all summer go away; the living part of the plant and the rich juices
find their way into the roots and stems. Only the dead frames of the
houses that the living parts of the leaves built in which to do their
work are left. They are dry and lifeless; they never were alive. The
living protoplasm has left them and unhinged them so that they soon fall
off.
You know what becomes of them. They change into a great many substances.
The little particles in them let go of each other and unite with other
particles. In this way gases are made which go out into the air, but
some parts are solid minerals which the roots took out of the earth to
build the frame of the leaves. All these minerals fall back into the
earth for the roots to use again next year.
So you see the leaf frame simply changes back again into the gases and
minerals of which it had been made by the leaves and the roots.
As the protoplasm withdraws from the leaves of the rose bushes and of
many other plants, particularly the trees, the resting time of the plant
is announced by the most brilliant colors, the result of certain changes
going on within the leaf. These bright colors that make our autumn woods
so entrancing are not dependent upon the frost, as many think, but upon
certain changes going on within the leaf itself as it ripens, just as
fruit, when it ripens, takes on glowing colors. The bright autumn leaves
are ripe leaves getting ready to fall. Why do you suppose leaves fall?
It is better that they should; the sooner they fall, the sooner they
will be converted into leaf mould to feed other plants. So the plants
have a way of gathering their ripe harvest of leaves.
The falling of the leaf is not an accident, nor is it dependent upon the
wind; when the time comes, the leaves go down, wind or no wind, though
doubtless the wind helps them. When they are fully ripe, the leaves let
go! The cells that connect the leaf stem with the branch shrivel and
shrink until the leaf is entirely separated from the parent plant; when
this happens, the leaf falls. The ripe leaf is less juicy than the young
leaf; its juices have departed and left the stiff, lifeless framework
and the hardened skin, with the emptied cells beneath, to find their way
to the earth.
But while the trees and bushes, the bulbs and underground stems store
away the living part of the plant, what about the morning-glories and
nasturtiums? They do not send their living part into roots or stems, for
they do not grow again another year. What now becomes of them?
They die, you say. I do not say that. I say they change. Of course the
seeds live on. The morning-glory seeds, and the seeds of all the plants
that grow wild in a climate like ours, are not hurt by the cold.
You very well know that some of the life of the plant is folded up in
the seeds. But the vines and leaves seem to be hurt by the cold. They
fall limp to the ground. They change. The little particles of which they
are made let go of each other; they unite with other particles in new
ways. They float off in the air as gases.
These gases are carried about by the wind and meet new plants, which
build them into their leaves and stems.
Part of the particles in the frosted vine do not become gases; they let
go of other particles and sink down as minerals, to be taken up by plant
roots another season. Other parts lie on the earth in the form of rich
vegetable mould, which is also taken and built into new plants. So when
our morning-glory or nasturtium vine disappears, it is not lost; it has
only changed its form.
Instead of being a nasturtium, its particles may find themselves built
into a dozen different plants.
So what we call death is only change. Not an atom of any plant is lost.
Besides, if no plants changed back again into gases and minerals, there
could be no growth and no flowers in the world. There would be no
material to make new plants, and no room for new plants to grow.
[Illustration: [Flower]]
There would be no room for seeds to sprout and no need of seeds, so the
plants, which never do anything that is not necessary, would not make
any seeds; and if there were no seeds, there would be no flowers. What a
dreary earth it would be if plants never changed—if they never, as we
say, died! The same old plants living forever,—no flowers, no opening
buds, no tender spring green, no bright autumn colors.
It is good that the plants die, or change, as I prefer to call it.