THE SEED AND HUSK.
1. Not the least sorrowful, nor least absurd of the confusions brought on
us by unscholarly botanists, blundering into foreign languages, when they
do not know how to use their own, is that which has followed on their
practice of calling the seed-vessels of flowers 'egg-vessels,'[65] in
Latin; thus involving total loss of the power of the good old English word
'husk,' and the good old French one, 'cosse.' For all the treasuries of
plants (see Chapter IV., § 17) may be best conceived, and described,
generally, as consisting of 'seed' and 'husk,'--for the most part two or
more seeds, in a husk composed of two or more parts, as pease in their
shell, pips in an orange, or kernels in a walnut; but whatever their
number, or the method of their enclosure, let the student keep clear in his
mind, for the base of all study of fructification, the broad distinction
between the seed, as one thing, and the husk as another: the seed,
essential to the continuance of the plant's race; and the husk, {220}
adapted, primarily, to its guard and dissemination; but secondarily, to
quite other and far more important functions.
2. For on this distinction follows another practical one of great
importance. A seed may serve, and many do mightily serve, for the food of
man, when boiled, crushed, or otherwise industriously prepared by man
himself, for his mere _sustenance_. But the _husk_ of the seed is prepared
in many cases for the delight of his eyes, and the pleasure of his palate,
by Nature herself, and is then called a 'fruit.'
3. The varieties of structure both in seed and husk, and yet more, the
manner in which the one is contained, and distributed by, the other, are
infinite; and in some cases the husk is apparently wanting, or takes some
unrecognizable form. But in far the plurality of instances the two parts of
the plant's treasury are easily distinguishable, and must be separately
studied, whatever their apparent closeness of relation, or, (as in all
natural things,) the equivocation sometimes taking place between the one
and the other. To me, the especially curious point in this matter is that,
while I find the most elaborate accounts given by botanists of the stages
of growth in each of these parts of the treasury, they never say of what
use the guardian is to the guarded part, irrespective of its service to
man. The mechanical action of the husk in containing and scattering the
seeds, they indeed often notice and insist on; but they do not tell {221}
us of what, if any, nutritious or fostering use the rind is to a chestnut,
or an orange's pulp to its pips, or a peach's juice to its stone.
4. Putting aside this deeper question for the moment, let us make sure we
understand well, and define safely, the separate parts themselves. A seed
consists essentially of a store, or sack, containing substance to nourish a
germ of life, which is surrounded by such substance, and in the process of
growth is first fed by it. The germ of life itself rises into two portions,
and not more than two, in the seeds of two-leaved plants; but this
symmetrical dualism must not be allowed to confuse the student's
conception, of the _three_ organically separate parts,--the tough skin of a
bean, for instance; the softer contents of it which we boil to eat; and the
small germ from which the root springs when it is sown. A bean is the best
type of the whole structure. An almond out of its shell, a peach-kernel,
and an apple-pip are also clear and perfect, though varied types.
5. The husk, or seed-vessel, is seen in perfect simplicity of type in the
pod of a bean, or the globe of a poppy. There are, I believe, flowers in
which it is absent or imperfect; and when it contains only one seed, it may
be so small and closely united with the seed it contains, that both will be
naturally thought of as one thing only. Thus, in a dandelion, the little
brown grains, which may be blown away, each with its silken parachute, are
every one of them a complete husk and {222} seed together. But the majority
of instances (and those of plants the most serviceable to man) in which the
seed-vessel has entirely a separate structure and mechanical power, justify
us in giving it the normal term 'husk,' as the most widely applicable and
intelligible.
6. The change of green, hard, and tasteless vegetable substance into
beautifully coloured, soft, and delicious substance, which produces what we
call a fruit, is, in most cases, of the husk only; in others, of the part
of the stalk which immediately sustains the seed; and in a very few
instances, not properly a change, but a distinct formation, of fruity
substance between the husk and seed. Normally, however, the husk, like the
seed, consists always of three parts; it has an outer skin, a central
substance of peculiar nature, and an inner skin, which holds the seed. The
main difficulty, in describing or thinking of the completely ripened
product of any plant, is to discern clearly which is the inner skin of the
husk, and which the outer skin of the seed. The peach is in this respect
the best general type,--the woolly skin being the outer one of the husk;
the part we eat, the central substance of the husk; and the hard shell of
the stone, the inner skin of the husk. The bitter kernel within is the
seed.
7. In this case, and in the plum and cherry, the two parts under present
examination--husk and seed--separate naturally; the fruity part, which is
the body of the husk, adhering firmly to the shell, which is its inner
{223} coat. But in the walnut and almond, the two outer parts of the husk
separate from the interior one, which becomes an apparently independent
'shell.' So that when first I approached this subject I divided the general
structure of a treasury into _three_ parts--husk, shell, and kernel; and
this division, when we once have mastered the main one, will be often
useful. But at first let the student keep steadily to his conception of the
two constant parts, husk and seed, reserving the idea of shells and kernels
for one group of plants only.
8. It will not be always without difficulty that he maintains the
distinction, when the tree pretends to have changed it. Thus, in the
chestnut, the inner coat of the husk becomes brown, adheres to the seed,
and seems part of it; and we naturally call only the thick, green, prickly
coat, the husk. But this is only one of the deceiving tricks of Nature, to
compel our attention more closely. The real place of separation, to _her_
mind, is between the mahogany-coloured shell and the nut itself, and that
more or less silky and flossy coating within the brown shell is the true
lining of the entire 'husk.' The paler brown skin, following the rugosities
of the nut, is the true sack or skin of the seed. Similarly in the walnut
and almond.
9. But, in the apple, two new tricks are played us. First, in the brown
skin of the ripe pip, we might imagine we saw the part correspondent to the
mahogany skin of the chestnut, and therefore the inner coat of the {224}
husk. But it is not so. The brown skin of the pips belongs to them
properly, and is all their own. It is the true skin or sack of the seed.
The inner coat of the husk is the smooth, white, scaly part of the core
that holds them.
Then,--for trick number two. We should as naturally imagine the skin of the
apple, which we peel off, to be correspondent to the skin of the peach; and
therefore, to be the outer part of the husk. But not at all. The outer part
of the husk in the apple is melted away into the fruity mass of it, and the
red skin outside is the skin of its _stalk_, not of its seed-vessel at all!
10. I say 'of its stalk,'--that is to say, of the part of the stalk
immediately sustaining the seed, commonly called the torus, and expanding
into the calyx. In the apple, this torus incorporates itself with the husk
completely; then refines its own external skin, and colours _that_
variously and beautifully, like the true skin of the husk in the peach,
while the withered leaves of the calyx remain in the 'eye' of the apple.
But in the 'hip' of the rose, the incorporation with the husk of the seed
does not take place. The torus, or,--as in this flower from its peculiar
form it is called,--the tube of the calyx, alone forms the frutescent part
of the hip; and the complete seeds, husk and all, (the firm triangular husk
enclosing an almond-shaped kernel,) are grouped closely in its interior
cavity, while the calyx remains on the top in a large and scarcely
withering star. {225} In the nut, the calyx remains green and beautiful,
forming what we call the husk of a filbert; and again we find Nature
amusing herself by trying to make us think that this strict envelope,
almost closing over the single seed, is the same thing to the nut that its
green shell is to a walnut!
11. With still more capricious masquing, she varies and hides the structure
of her 'berries.'
The strawberry is a hip turned inside-out, the frutescent receptacle
changed into a scarlet ball, or cone, of crystalline and delicious coral,
in the outside of which the separate seeds, husk and all, are imbedded. In
the raspberry and blackberry, the interior mound remains sapless; and the
rubied translucency of dulcet substance is formed round each separate seed,
_upon_ its husk; not a part of the husk, but now an entirely independent
and added portion of the plant's bodily form.
12. What is thus done for each seed, on the _out_side of the receptacle, in
the raspberry, is done for each seed, _in_side the calyx, in a pomegranate;
which is a hip in which the seeds have become surrounded with a radiant
juice, richer than claret wine; while the seed itself, within the generous
jewel, is succulent also, and spoken of by Tournefort as a "baie
succulente." The tube of the calyx, brown-russet like a large hip,
externally, is yet otherwise divided, and separated wholly from the
cinque-foiled, and cinque-celled rose, both in number of petal and division
of treasuries; the calyx has eight points, and nine cells. {226}
13. Lastly, in the orange, the fount of fragrant juice is interposed
between the seed and the husk. It is wholly independent of both; the
Aurantine rind, with its white lining and divided compartments, is the true
husk; the orange pips are the true seeds; and the eatable part of the fruit
is formed between them, in clusters of delicate little flasks, as if a
fairy's store of scented wine had been laid up by her in the hollow of a
chestnut shell, between the nut and rind; and then the green changed to
gold.
14. I have said '_lastly_'--of the orange, for fear of the reader's
weariness only; not as having yet represented, far less exhausted, the
variety of frutescent form. But these are the most important types of it;
and before I can explain the relation between these, and another, too often
confounded with them--the _granular_ form of the seed of grasses.--I must
give some account of what, to man, is far more important than the form--the
gift to him in fruit-food; and trial, in fruit-temptation.
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