flowers. Children instinctively want to pick them. They wish to possess,
touch, caress these lovely objects. If left unguided, this tendency
shortly degenerates in many children into a desire to pick every flower
in sight. A walk taken by such children through the fields can be traced
by the wild flowers that strew the way. Great handfuls are gathered, and
then, becoming burdensome, are thrown down. The child who lovingly
watches his flowers grow and blossom will be less likely to destroy in
this wanton manner. Here, too, is a good opportunity to teach him to be
thoughtful and generous to others. If he carelessly tears up and throws
away the flowers, those who come after him will not have them to enjoy;
it is far better to look at the flowers and admire them in their own
homes and leave them there. A little crowd of hepaticas at the root of a
tree in the woods is one of the most charming sights of spring. Let the
child who finds such a treasure call the rest, that they too may enjoy
the pretty picture; let the children get down and put their faces
against the flowers if they want to smell them, and then go away leaving
the beauty undisturbed. Their adult comrade at such a time by exclaiming
appreciatively over the sweetness of the little scene, the bright
flowers against the dark tree, the green moss growing over the rock at
one side, can often open young eyes to a harmony of beauty which will
cause the whole composition to be recalled later with pure pleasure; a
far deeper and higher pleasure this little picture lingering in the
memory than any number of flowers torn from their places soon to wilt in
the hands of the vandals whose only thought is how to get the most in
the shortest time.
Should children never gather flowers, then? Of course they should. But
they should learn to exercise restraint, and as they grow older,
judgment. They can easily be persuaded to gather only a few flowers. A
few are almost always more beautiful than a great mass, and there is no
exception to this whatever where the delicate spring flowers are
concerned. Let the child carefully gather a few to take home to mother,
father, sister, aunt, some dear one who has not shared the walk. These
flowers should not be neglected, but at once put in water, placed where
they can be seen and enjoyed, and the water should be changed every day
as long as they last. In this way the flower gives real pleasure to a
number of people, and the child learns several lessons valuable to the
formation of his character.
As the child grows older, he can be taught not only self-control
against gathering useless quantities of flowers, but also to exercise
judgment in regard to those he does pick. For instance, seeing a flaming
bush against a superb background of green foliage, shall he disturb the
poise of the picture for the sake of taking some of the flowers? Better
is it to look about for similar flowers less beautifully placed. Instead
of culling from the little hepatica company at the tree root, let him
search for more hidden or less beautifully grouped flowers. The isolated
flowers will be just as pretty after they are picked as are those in the
fortunately placed groups; for he will soon learn that with the flower
he cannot take its surroundings excepting in the memory. In this way he
will be able to carry away a beautiful mind-picture such as would not
remain if he had destroyed it; he will become more observant of the
flowers as pictures, cultivate his taste, in short, and also learn to
enjoy beauty without destroying it.
Wanton destruction of flowers should never be countenanced, no matter
how abundant the flowers may be. Self-restraint is not inculcated for
the sake of saving the flowers so much as for the influence it will have
upon the development of the child, although there are parts of the
country where one would like to see it exercised for the sake of the
flowers themselves. The child who learns to respect flowers will never
be one of that discreditable company who by sheer vandalism are
constantly driving the wild flowers farther into the back country,
finally exterminating whole species. In many parts of New England, banks
which were carpeted with arbutus a generation ago are now devoid of a
single root. Spring may come and Spring may go, but no may-flowers will
ever again shine from those banks to delight the eye of the woodland
wanderer. All the generations to come must be deprived of the pleasure
of these delightful flowers, the earliest visitants of spring--to what
end? Did the pleasure they gave to those who took them compensate in the
least degree for their loss to the world? Truly not.
In all the open places near cities, where flowers would delight the
greatest number of eyes and hearts, there are no flowers, and this
because those who went first had no respect for the flowers themselves
or for the rights of those who came after.
Not only should the child learn to exercise judgment in gathering
flowers, but he should also learn how to gather them properly. If the
arbutus had not been carelessly torn up by the roots and trampled on, it
would have yielded its whole tribute of blossoms year after year without
disappearing. If the arbutus-gatherers, knowing the nature of the
treasure they were gathering, had gone armed with scissors and had
clipped the blossoming ends without other injury to the plant, at the
same time taking care not to trample it, the banks would still have been
clad in beauty.
VII
THE FERTILIZATION OF THE FLOWER
As a preparation for this work, let the children notice the flower-dust
or pollen that shakes out of the flowers or is seen clinging to the
anthers.
[Illustration: BEE--SHOWING POLLEN-BASKET]
The child presently discovers where the pollen comes from. It is hidden
in the anthers. He can hunt in all the flowers to find these little
pollen-boxes, some of which, as in the goldenrods, are so small that he
will have hard work to find them, even though they shed such clouds of
pollen. He can notice the different kinds of stamens, see how some have
long stems or filaments, others short ones, others again none at all.
The filament is of no other use than to hold up the anther. The anther
with its pollen is the important thing; so there may be useful stamens
with no filaments, but never useful stamens with no anthers.
The amount of pollen in the flowers is always astonishing and
interesting. Why should there be so much?
That the bee gathers honey from the blossoms is one of the earliest
things the child learns. Just whereabouts in the flower-cup, and just
how the bee finds this honey, how it carries it home, where and how and
why it stores it in the hive, is one of the most fascinating of stories,
as good as a fairy tale. In connection with this comes very naturally
the story of the bees and the pollen. The child will be delighted to
learn that the bees collect pollen as well as honey; that the honey bees
and bumble-bees have baskets on their legs on purpose to carry it home;
that they knead it up with honey and make it into what is known as
bee-bread.
We seldom see bee-bread these days, as patent hives furnish all the
honey found in city stores and no bee-bread is sold. In remote country
places, however, where the honey is removed _en masse_ from the hive,
there will be plenty of bee-bread to give piquancy to the children's
bread and honey. Moreover, where bees are kept, the bee-keeper can
usually be persuaded to take out a little bee-bread for the children to
see and taste; for it is always present no matter what the kind of hive
used, though it is not always easily obtainable, for where their
household arrangements permit, the bees generally prefer to store it in
the lower chambers away from the honey. Thus the flower supplies large
quantities of food for the bees and for us, and long ago, before America
was discovered and before cane-sugar came into use, the people depended
upon honey for their sweetening.
When the children have found how general is the presence of pollen in
the flowers, where it comes from, and how it is gathered by the bees,
they can learn that the pollen is valuable to the plant itself. It is
indeed one of the most necessary parts of the flower, for without it the
ovules could not develop.
The effect of the pollen upon the seeds can be prettily illustrated by a
simple experiment. Take two or three little pots of geraniums whose buds
are just ready to open. Be sure to have single geraniums, and to stand
them where they will not be disturbed and where the wind will not blow
upon them. Shortly after the flower opens, the anthers will be seen
crowded in its throat and covered with pollen. After a few days the
pollen will have dried up, and the style, tipped with a five-rayed
star-like stigma, will push up above the anthers. Mark pot No. 1 as
untouched. From pot No. 2 carefully take a little pollen on the end of a
small clean paint-brush or tooth-pick and touch with it the five-rayed,
star-like stigma of the flowers in pot No. 3. Be careful not to let any
of it touch the stigmas of the flowers in pot No. 2, the pot from whose
flowers the pollen is taken.
Leave the flower-pots undisturbed and watch results. When the flowers
finally drop their petals, in pots No. 1 and No. 2 there will be no
seed-pods remaining, everything will drop, including the little
flower-stalks and the main stalk supporting the whole cluster of
flowers. In short, no trace of flowers will be left. So far as
seed-forming is concerned, the flowers might as well never have
blossomed. Very different will be the result in the flowers of pot No.
3. These received the pollen on the stigma, and in some way this pollen
affected the ovules so that they began to develop. We say the flower was
fertilized by the pollen, and "fertilized" is a valuable word to learn
at once. When the petals of the fertilized flowers fall, all does not
fall. There remains the ovary with the long style and the star-like
stigma. The ovary continues to grow, as do the seeds within it. Since
the geranium is a house-plant, raised under unnatural conditions, not
all the fertilized flowers will succeed. Some may fall at once, like the
unfertilized ones. But out of the whole bunch of fertilized flowers some
will be almost sure to start the development enough to show that in some
way the fertilized flowers were able to produce seeds, while the others
will in no case make any attempt at seed-forming. Even though none of
the seeds come to perfection, the fact that they start at all will
demonstrate the effect of the pollen. The geranium is a good plant to
use in illustrating this point, because it is so constructed that it
cannot fertilize its own flowers.
What the child thus far learns is simply that the pollen is in some way
necessary to the development of the ovule. If the experiment with the
geraniums is not practicable, the child can be told that the pollen is
necessary to the development of the seed, that it falls upon the stigma
and nourishes the little ovules down in the ovary, and that no seed can
form without the aid of the pollen. All the seeds we plant in the flower
gardens or in the vegetable gardens, and all the grain we sow in the
fields, are produced by the help of pollen. All the peas and beans and
other seeds we eat owe their existence in part to the pollen, and
without it they could not develop.
Some parents teach their children at once that the pistil is the
mother-part of the plant, caring for the young seeds, the stamens the
father part, providing for them, and that the stamens and pistil
growing in the same flower are brothers and sisters. Other parents
prefer to use only botanical terms, leaving the extension of the thought
to later consideration or to the child's own logic, for children often
reason out all the facts--in a very general way, of course--from only
this botanical study.
But we are not yet done with the pollen. It not only assists the ovule
to develop, but it impresses upon it its own characteristics. In other
words, the seed inherits from the pollen as well as from the ovule.
Inheritance is a very wonderful thing. It is that power which causes the
offspring to resemble its parents. In some wonderful way the tiny ovule,
the tiny pollen grain, remember everything about the plant they came
from and are able to transmit this memory to the developing offspring,
so that it may become like its parents.
Again, the child under eight can understand the principal facts of
fertilization. The older child can add to his stock of facts, and one of
the things he will be likely to want to know is how the little pollen
grain up on the stigma can influence the ovule down in the ovary.
We know how the ovule is formed. We know that it grows from the inside
of the ovary. If we were able to examine the development of the pollen
grain inside the anther from its very beginning, we should find the same
thing true of it. The anther is a little box like the ovary, and the
pollen grain grows from the inside of it, being at first a part of it
and nourished by the same sap. When it became ripe it fell free into the
anther cavity. We then have a little box full of ripe pollen grains.[1]
The pollen grain is like the ovule in structure, only much smaller. It
is so tiny and the anther so small that we cannot watch its development
as we can that of the ovule. But botanists have taken great pains to
examine the pollen and to watch its development under the microscope, so
that from them we know the truth.
If we examine the young ovule we find it apparently nothing but a little
sac full of a semi-liquid substance. This semi-liquid substance, or at
least a part of it, is alive and is very important. It is protoplasm,
which is the only living substance; all the living parts of plants and
animals are made from protoplasm.
[Illustration: POLLEN GRAINS (MAGNIFIED), AND STIGMA]
The pollen grain is also a little sac containing protoplasm. Thus we
have these two little sacs of living substance, each growing in a
similar manner, one to the inside of an ovary, the other to the inside
of an anther. Naturally, it is the living substance in these little sacs
that is important. It is the living substance of the ovule that unites
with the living substance of the pollen grain to become a seed; or, to
say the same thing another way, it is the living substance of the pollen
grain that unites with that of the ovule to become a seed; or yet again,
it is the union of these two living substances that enables the seed to
develop.
[Illustration: THE POLLEN TUBE PASSING THROUGH THE STYLE TO THE OVARY]
To understand how the pollen substance finds its way to the ovule
substance let us examine the pollen grain a little more carefully.
Pollen grains are of many shapes, though usually they are globe-shaped,
or football-shaped. Tiny as they are, the outer skin is often marked
with grooves and ridges in a very ornamental manner. They have two
skins, an outer hard one, a softer inner one. The outer skin is not
equally thick and hard all over. It has little glazed spots sometimes,
like little glazed windows. Now, when the pistil is ripe the stigma is
_sticky_. When the pollen grain falls upon this sticky stigma its inside
wall swells up, just as the bean does when we soak it. But the outside
wall cannot swell, consequently the inner wall finally breaks through at
one of the weak spots in the outer wall. Then the inner wall absorbing
moisture and nutriment from the stigma actually grows, becoming a tube,
which finds its way down through the style. The living substance of the
pollen grain runs into the tip of this tube, and so is carried with it
down through the style. The tube is nourished by the juices of the style
as it goes along, and finally it gets to the ovary and the ovule. Every
ovule has a tiny opening, or micropyle as it is called, and it is now
easy to guess what that is for. The pollen tube pushes straight toward
the micropyle, enters into the ovule through the micropyle, and then the
living substance it has carried all this distance in its tip breaks
through its delicate wall and mingles with the living substance of the
ovule. When this has happened, the ovule begins to grow and to develop
into a seed.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE OF POLLEN-TUBE THROUGH THE MICROPYLE TO THE
OVULE]
We see that the whole pollen grain could not possibly force its way
down to the ovule. It cannot move of itself, for one thing, and if it
could it is too large to pass between the tissues of the style. So it
simply sends down the long tube, which grows fast, pushing along through
the style, whose tissues are rather loose, and carrying with it the only
valuable part of the pollen grain, its living protoplasm. No ovule can
possibly grow into a grain without this tiny bit of pollen.
In explaining this union of the two protoplasms, the child's mind can be
turned upon the wonderful mystery--one of the great mysteries of the
universe--of how this tiny atom can influence the whole future plant.
There is ample opportunity here to elevate his mind and spirit to a high
plane, and, by talking of the wonders of inheritance, to give many a
hint for future reflection. Without this law of inheritance the world
would be chaos. Imagine the seed of a rose sometimes developing into an
oak tree, the egg of a bird into a bee or a trout. Imagine eggs
developing haphazard into anything. There would be no use in living.
Nothing could be depended upon. But there is no danger that any such
thing will happen: the law of inheritance is unyielding. From a rose
seed must come a rose bush,--and this is good. But on the other hand,
from the seed of a weak, poor plant will grow another weak, poor plant.
Whatever the parent is, good or bad, that must the offspring be. But
sometimes the offspring inherits only the best in the parents, and so is
better than they.
Thus in gathering his seeds, the child will select only the largest and
best and take them from only the best plants to put in his garden the
next year, at the same time planting beautiful truths in the garden of
his soul. Not the least of these truths is a profound sense of the
immutability of law. Through his nature-work the child can learn as
nowhere else the stern, unbreakable decrees of law, and the respect and
reverence due to it from every intelligent being. Another important and
far-reaching fact that the child can learn from his garden is, that his
plants are good or poor according to the care he takes of them. They
must have the right kind of food (soil), the right amount of water, the
right temperature and surroundings,--some loving the open sunshine,
others needing to be partly protected from it. In short, according as
its environment is suited to its needs, and as its inheritance is good
or bad, will the plant be strong and handsome or otherwise.
Another truth to be learned from the flowers is the value of
cross-fertilization. This was demonstrated by the great Darwin, who
fertilized a number of flowers with their own pollen, and an equal
number with the pollen from the blossoms of another plant of the same
kind. When the seeds were ripe he gathered them, carefully keeping those
of the self-fertilized flowers separate from the others. The next season
he planted both sets of seeds under exactly the same conditions, that
is, they had the same soil and moisture, the same sun and air, and the
same care. The plants that grew from these two sets of seeds were very
different, those from the self-fertilized seeds being smaller and weaker
in every way than those from the seeds fertilized with pollen from
another plant, or cross-fertilized, as we say, thus proving that it is
not best for the plant to be self-fertilized. Someway, it needs the
stimulus from less closely related pollen in order to grow vigorously
and perfectly.
While the cross-fertilization of the same order of plants is so
desirable, it is not possible for the pollen of one order to fertilize
the ovules of another order. There must be a certain degree of
similarity between flowers able to fertilize each other. The pollen of
an apple blossom might, for instance, rest upon the stigma of a lily,
but the pollen could not penetrate to the lily ovule. It would have no
effect upon the lily.
That the seed inherits equally from the ovule and the pollen grain is a
truth that should be impressed in many ways. It is very wonderful that
anything so small as a pollen grain, often as small as the tiniest speck
of dust, should be able to transmit to the young seed the peculiarities
of the plant from which it came. That it does this, the child himself
can prove in a most interesting way. He can plant some white petunia
seeds in one side of his garden, and some red ones in the other. The
seeds should come from a reliable florist's in order to be sure of
results. When the petunias ripen their seeds, those from the white
flowers should be gathered and carefully labelled, and then those of the
red flowers, care being taken not to mix the two colors. The next
summer, plant the seeds as before. When the flowers blossom, those in
the white bed will no longer be white,--some may be, but others will be
red, and still others red and white. The same will be true of the
flowers in the red bed. What has happened? The bees going from flower to
flower have carried the pollen from one bed to the other, and some of
it, rubbing off on the stigmas as the bees searched for honey,
fertilized the flowers. Thus some of the ovules of the white flowers
received an impression of red from the pollen of the red flowers, and
grew into red flowering plants. In others where the impression of red
was less strong, the result was the production of red-and-white spotted
flowers.
By fertilizing white flowers with pollen from red ones we can almost
always get seeds that will develop into plants bearing flowers that are
not white. What is true of color is true of other characteristics of the
plant, such, for instance, as size and shape of leaves, habit of growth,
size, shape, and quality of fruit, etc. Thus by careful
cross-fertilization, we are able to produce not only beautiful and new
blossoms, but also many delicious new fruits. Most of our cultivated
fruits have been produced in this way. For instance, if two species of
wild strawberries were found, one, large and beautiful but sour or
tasteless, the other, small but delicious, the two could be bred
together until finally a perfect berry, large and well-flavored, would
result.
[Illustration: FLOWERS NEEDING CROSS-FERTILIZATION, SOME WITH OVARY BUT
NO STAMENS, OTHERS WITH STAMENS BUT NO OVARY]
When the children are interested in their gardens they can try to make a
new flower, using for the first experiments one that comes up from the
seed, blossoms, and matures its seeds the same year, and also readily
changes its color as a result of cross-fertilization. Such are the
petunia and the sweet-pea. The prettiest new flower produced can be
marked and its seeds saved for future use, and the flower can have a
name of its own. Florists often name their choice new flowers from some
beautiful woman, and it would be a pretty tribute on the part of the
child to name his favorite new petunia or sweet-pea after his mother. Of
course this work will necessarily be very crude and the results
uncertain, since the successful production of new plants is a science in
itself; but enough can be done to interest the young experimenter
thoroughly and enable him to learn many valuable lessons. In these
early, childish experiments, an interest in gardening may be awakened,
which will last through life, the man, the woman, finding rest,
relaxation, exercise, and pleasure in going from the trying daily work
to the garden a while every day. Even a plot of ground a few feet square
can afford great opportunity for experiment and beauty.
Cross-fertilization among the plants does not, of course, depend upon
man as an agent. Since cross-fertilization is so valuable, it is not
surprising to find many devices in the plant world for securing it.
Honey and color, which attract winged messengers, are among the most
universal helps to cross-fertilization. In many cases, the structure of
the flower is such that it cannot fertilize itself. In the geranium, the
stamen and the pistil in the same flower mature at different times. In
some species, as among the lilies, the style is so long that the pollen
could not fall upon it without artificial aid. Some flowers are so
constructed that they can be fertilized by certain kinds of insects and
by no others; among these are the orchids and our clovers and
milk-weeds. Again, some flowers have an ovary but no stamens, while a
neighbor has stamens but no ovary, making self-fertilization absolutely
impossible.
Indeed there is nothing more fascinating in the study of botany than the
methods by which the flowers secure cross-fertilization, nearly all of
our common garden-flowers affording illustrations. Here too, is a field
where the young botanist can do really valuable work, for while much is
known and has been written on the subject, much remains unknown. There
are many books that give valuable and delightful information about
cross-fertilization.