flowers, but something answering to them. The ovules, or young seeds,
are borne under the scales of the cones, and the stamens are in
catkins. Sometimes these catkins are very large, and they bear a great
deal of pollen which the wind carries to the cones.
A pine forest is always a sweet and delightful place. When the sun
shines on the trees they fill the air with fragrance.
Pine trees used to grow all over the northern part of the United
States, but they make very valuable timber, and so have been carelessly
cut down and the forests destroyed, until now in many places there are
almost no pine trees left.
This was a great mistake, as the people now know. The white pine
of the North gave a soft white wood that could be easily carved or
“turned,” and it was used more extensively than any other
wood as long as the forests lasted.
A large part of the South is still covered by forests of yellow pine,
whose wood is dark, hard, and valuable for building purposes.
The pine forests of the South also yield large quantities of tar,
resin, and turpentine, and it is sad to see the forests being
carelessly destroyed each year. The trees are cut for their sap, from
which turpentine and other products are made, but if the same trees are
cut three years in succession they die.
The turpentine makers, however, cut them as long as they will yield
sap, because it is easier to stay in one place three years than to move
their camps to a region of fresh trees. This is wrong, and will result
in destroying the valuable Southern pine forests in a short time.
We should take care of the trees, for they are our good friends.
Besides providing wood for all sorts of uses, they protect the earth,
keep it moist, and prevent the streams from drying up. In many places
the farming land has been destroyed, because the forests were cut down
when the land all about dried up, so that nothing of value to man could
grow on it.
With proper management trees can be cut for use without destroying the
forests.
[Illustration]
SEEDS THAT FLY WITHOUT WINGS OR PLUMES.
Poppy seeds have no wings and no plumes, and yet they are carried far
and wide by the wind. That is because they are so very small and so
very light. They look more like dust than seeds.
[Illustration: Poppy pod.]
The poppy pod is like a cup with a cover on, but around the edge, just
below the cover, is a row of small holes, each covered by a lid. These
lids do not open until the poppy seeds are ripe; then they do, and the
fine seeds can get out of the holes. But _how_ do they get out? They
cannot move of themselves, but the wind sways the poppy pod this way
and that on its long stalk, and the little seeds are shaken out only to
be caught by the wind and blown away.
Perhaps you think that is not a very sure way for the seeds to escape,
but if you examine a poppy head that has been ripe for some time you
will find scarcely a seed in it, so it proves to be a better way than
it looks.
Nature’s way is generally the best way to accomplish an object.
Poppies are often seen growing by the roadside or in the garden, far
from the flower beds; that is because the wind has blown the seeds to
these places.
In England the wheat fields are often gay with scarlet poppies, which
have, no doubt, been sown with the wheat. They are beautiful to look
at, though the farmer does not enjoy seeing them in his wheat.
Opium is obtained from the juice of the partly ripened seed pods of
some kinds of poppies. Opium is very valuable as a medicine, but it has
to be used with great care, as it is also a powerful poison.
[Illustration]
A valuable oil is expressed from the seeds of the opium poppy. This oil
is used for illuminating purposes in some parts of the world, and also
for soap-making. The finer quality is used as food, instead of olive
oil, in countries where oil is eaten instead of butter, and it is also
used in grinding artists’ colors.
OTHER SEEDS THAT ARE MOVED BY THE WIND.
[Illustration]
Many, many other plants have seeds or seed pods that can be carried
away by the wind. The fields and hedges are full of plumes and winged
seeds, and of seeds so light as to be readily carried away without
special plumes or wings.
At the top of this page is the picture of a trumpet vine. When you have
the chance, examine the seeds in the pod of the trumpet vine and see
how they are enabled to fly away.
Hops are pretty plants, and useful ones as well, and if you examine hop
seeds—you will see—what you will see!
Some clovers have seeds that fly. See if you can find them.
[Illustration]
Linden trees are covered with clusters of white sweet-scented flowers
in the early summer. Each cluster of flowers is attached in a curious
way to a wing, and often the whole cluster, with its wing, falls
together and is blown to some distance by the wind. When the lindens
are in bloom you will know it by the humming of the bees, for they are
very fond of linden honey, and the trees often sound like an enormous
beehive, there are so many bees about them.
It would take altogether too long to tell about all the seeds that are
carried by the wind, but you can find a great many of them without
being told; and that, after all, is the best way. At the bottom of this
page are the seed pods of the cow parsnip, a very large, coarse, but
rather handsome weed, often found in the corners of pastures. You can
see that its seed pods fly.
TUMBLEWEEDS.
Tumbleweeds _are_ funny! They do not fly in the air, but they go
scurrying over the surface of the earth. They grow on the Western
plains and in other places, and sometimes get to be as large as a
bushel basket.
[Illustration]
They are not very interesting until they begin to tumble. This happens
in the fall of the year.
The plants grow like ordinary little bushes in the summer and bear a
great many clusters of small flowers. Late in the season the leaves
fall off, and the stems of the plant curl over and make a ball of it.
The seeds do not fall yet; they can be seen in pretty brown clusters
inside the ball.
Along comes a gust of wind; the tumbleweed, all rolled up and quite dry
now, breaks loose from the earth and away it goes, head over heels,
rolling like a wild thing across the prairies.
It is very funny to see a prairie full of tumbleweeds racing along.
They look as if they were playing tag. When a train passes, those near
the track are caught in the draught and off they start, head over
heels, as fast as they can. They look exactly as if they were chasing
the train.
The tumbleweed does not send its seed children out alone into the
world; it goes along and spills them over the prairies, as it tumbles
about; for, after a while, the seeds get thoroughly ripe and fall off.
If you were to see the tumbleweeds rolling about over the prairies
in the fall, you would not wonder there are so many of them growing
everywhere in the summer.
There are several kinds of tumbleweeds in the West. One of them is
called the Russian thistle, though it is not a thistle. It came from
Europe and has proved to be the very worst weed the farmer has to deal
with.
It tumbles about in the fall, rolling far and wide over the prairies
before the high winds. In a few years it has become such a nuisance
that large sums of money are spent by the government to exterminate it.
In some places the school children have been taught to recognize it and
to pull it up wherever they see it growing.
[Illustration]
WANDERERS THAT CLING
BURDOCKS.
Seeds have other ways of going about besides being blown by the wind.
One way is to fasten on to anything or anybody that passes and get
carried to some other place.
[Illustration]
Burdocks do this. Burdocks grow in dooryards if they get a chance,
and in fence corners and pastures and along roadsides, and in fact
almost anywhere. They are sturdy weeds and often grow quite large. In
“The Ugly Duckling,” Hans Andersen tells us about them.
“In a sunny spot stood a pleasant old farmhouse, circled all
about with deep canals; and from the walls down to the water’s
edge grew great burdocks, so high that under the tallest of them a
little child might stand upright.”
Like the dandelions and Canada thistles, the burdocks came from Europe,
and a great many people wish they had stayed at home. That is because
of their burrs, which are a nuisance in the fall of the year.
Everybody knows what burrs are. They stick fast to the clothes of
people and get on the tails and manes of horses, where they must cause
a great deal of discomfort, and where it is a great deal of work to
pick them out. They get upon the tails of cows, too, and the fleeces
of sheep, and dogs get them on their ears. The reason is this: the
burrs are full of seed pods. The burdock flower head is, like the
dandelion, made up of a great many tiny flowers, and each flower has a
close-fitting pod containing one seed, or an akene, as we have learned
to call it.
The head of flowers is covered by stiff green bracts, and at the end
of each bract is a hook. These hooks are soft when the flowers are
in blossom, and they do not catch fast to things. But when the seeds
ripen, the bracts grow hard and stiff, and so do the hooks at the end.
[Illustration]
Now, when an animal or a person comes along and brushes against these
ripe burrs, the strong hooks catch; the burr, full of ripe akenes, is
pulled from the plant and is carried away. It is easy to guess why this
happens.
When one tries to pull a ripe burr from the clothes, it falls all to
pieces and the akenes spill out. Then each hook has to be pulled out
separately, and very likely each one will prick the fingers.
Children sometimes pick the burrs before they are ripe, and stick
them together to make baskets and other things. Then the burrs do not
fall to pieces nor prick the fingers much. The burdock has a rank,
disagreeable odor that clings to the fingers a long time after the
burrs have been handled. It is not easy even to wash it off.
Children often pick ripe burrs and throw them at each other. Some think
this is funny, and some think it is naughty.
Burdocks yield a valuable medicine; so they are useful as well as
troublesome.
[Illustration]
COCKLEBURS AND SAND SPURS.
Cockleburs are covered with hooks, too, but they are much uglier than
burdocks, for their seed pods are very hard and are covered on the
outside with stiff, strong hooks that prick like needles.
When one walks among cockleburs, he soon stops to pick them off, for
they hurt so, he cannot bear it.
Sand spurs are even worse than cockleburs. They are the seed coverings
to a kind of grass.
[Illustration: Cockleburs.]
In Florida this grass grows in tufts and spreads out close to the
ground. Some of its stalks are covered with sand spurs that, like the
cockleburs, are hard and are covered, not with hooks, but with very
hard spines. These spines stick out in all directions and readily
fasten upon whomever or whatever comes along, when they leave the
parent grass and are carried away. After a time they are picked off
and thrown on the ground, or they fall off, and that is their way of
traveling to find a place to grow.
Dogs often get them in their feet, and then they have a hard time
picking them out, for of course the poor things cannot walk with sand
spurs between their toes.
There was once a dog that hated sand spurs and loved people so much
that when any one came near him with sand spurs on his clothes, he
would at once begin to pick them off, and the expression with which he
jerked them out of his mouth showed very plainly what he thought of
sand spurs.
[Illustration: Sand spurs.]
TICK TREFOIL.
When walking in the woods in the late summer we sometimes find queer
jointed little pods, like unfinished pea pods, clinging to our clothes.
[Illustration]
These come from plants that belong to the Pea family and are called
Tick Trefoil. There are nearly two dozen kinds of them, and sometimes
they seem to be everywhere in the woods and thickets.
The pods are like pea pods, only that they are jointed, and the joints
break apart, so that each may be carried away separately. Each joint
contains a little pealike seed.
The outside of the pod seems fuzzy, and it clings very closely to
whatever it touches. If we look at the fuzz with a magnifying glass, we
shall find it made up of innumerable little hooks.
The hairs that cover the pod are turned up at the end to form little
hooks, very delicate, but able, when there are so many of them, to
hold on very tightly.
They seem to snuggle down into the cloth they touch, so that it is
difficult to pick them off, and the joints all separate when we try to
remove them, so that each one has to be taken off separately.
Another plant whose seed pods are covered with hooked hairs is the
sweet-scented bedstraw. This is a pretty little plant that spreads
about on the ground. Its flowers are small and greenish, but the whole
plant when in bloom has a pretty lace-like effect as we find it in the
woods very often growing about fallen logs.
[Illustration: Sweet-scented bedstraw.]
Its seed pods are small and, like the tick trefoil, are covered with
hairs that, under the magnifying glass, are seen to be hooked.
The enchanter’s nightshade is another little plant whose seed
pods are covered with hooked hair. It is as pretty as its name and is
to be found in damp woods.
There is a tall leafy kind that grows sometimes two feet high and is
topped with numerous branches of small white flowers. As the flower
stem lengthens, the flowers continue to unfold at the tip, while lower
down are the many little seed pods, shaped like little tennis racquets.
The prettiest enchanter’s nightshade, however, is a little fairy
that sometimes grows on decaying logs. It is often not more than three
or four inches high and ends in a branch of pretty little white flowers
with bright red calyx lobes. After these dainty blossoms come the
little hook-haired, racquet-shaped seed pods.
[Illustration]
Look for enchanter’s nightshade the next time you go to the woods
in the summer time. Below is a picture of the large one.
STICK-TIGHTS.
Stick-tights are troublesome to us, and we call them very disagreeable
names, such as beggar ticks and beggar lice. But they are really not
bad at all and are quite pretty. If they stick to us, that is our fault
quite as much as theirs, for we should keep away from them if we are
unwilling to carry them about.
They cling to whatever comes along, because that is their way of
traveling about. They cannot walk or creep or crawl or jump; neither
can they fly very far nor move in any other way, excepting as they are
carried.
You know how they look—so [Illustration: Stick-tight plant.] Of course
this little brown, flat object with horns is an akene. Inside it is a
seed. The two horns at the top are able to fasten it quite tightly to a
woolen dress or a sheep’s fleece. If you look carefully, you will see
little hard teeth on the edge of the stick-tight that help it to cling.
On one species of stick-tight these teeth point backward, like the
barbs of a fishhook, and that kind sticks very tightly.
Stick-tight plants blossom in the summer time. The greenish-yellow
flowers are clustered in heads like the dandelion flowers, and like
those each stick-tight flower has an akene at the bottom. These akenes
grow much larger than those of the dandelion, and they have the two
horns on their heads.
The akenes stand on a flat cushion, just as the dandelion akenes do,
but these do not wait for the wind to blow them away, though, if
nothing comes along to pull them loose, they in time become very dry
and fall out, and then the wind often carries the light little things
some distance.
But their favorite method of traveling is by stagecoach, and if you
happen along at the right time they will take you for their stagecoach,
and let you carry them to a new place. Sometimes the plants grow so
closely together that in passing through them one becomes quite covered
with the little brown things, and it is a long and tiresome task to
pick them out.
They, too, get on the tails and manes of horses, and the tails of cows,
the coats of dogs, and the fleeces of sheep; but they are not nearly as
troublesome to these creatures as are the burdocks.
There are several species of stick-tights, or beggar ticks, as they are
more generally called.
Some have rather large flower heads, with the outer flowers each
provided with a long, broad yellow petal. These are often called wild
sunflowers, because they look something like a little sunflower.
There is a plant called Spanish needles, very closely related to the
stick-tights, and that has four horns to its seed pod.
The burr marigold, which grows in wet places, and whose greenish flower
heads are round like a marble, is also related to the stick-tights,
and, like the Spanish needles, has four horns.
A great many plants have these little horned seed cases, and when you
go about the country in the fall of the year you will be certain to
make the acquaintance of some of them. The plants with horned seed pods
wish their seeds to get out of the dense thickets in which they usually
grow, and they do what they can to help them.
[Illustration]
AGRIMONY AND OTHER WEEDS.
In the fall of the year and towards the end of summer we find a great
many weeds in the woods and along the roads, sending their seeds out
into the world by means of stout hooks, or else hooked hairs or sharp
spines.
[Illustration]
The agrimony is one of these. It is a common, rather pretty plant
with yellow flowers, and it has a burr or seed pod, armed with hooked
prickles around the waist, so to speak.
After a walk in the country through woods and fields, in the autumn,
one will be likely to find a number of little things clinging to
one’s clothes. Instead of merely shaking or picking them off and
throwing them away, carefully collect them, and when there is time look
at them.
You will very likely find yourself decorated with a number of different
kinds of seeds or seed pods, that vainly hoped in you to find a means
of traveling to new and better places of growth.
All these little brown things are disappointed, or would be if they
could feel disappointed. But you can profit by their misfortune, and,
by carefully examining the little wanderers, can learn a great many
interesting and wonderful truths about the plant world in its effort to
scatter its seeds.
[Illustration]
FLAX.
The flax is a very useful plant, for the fibers of its stems are long
and strong, and are spun into thread and then woven into linen.
Besides this, the seeds are useful. They contain an oil which is
pressed out and is known as linseed oil. It is used a great deal by
painters in mixing their paints.
When flaxseeds are wet they become very sticky on the outside. A
jelly-like substance covers them, and this it is which we drink in
“flaxseed tea” to cure our colds.
[Illustration: Flax.]
You can easily see this jelly-like covering by putting a few flaxseeds
in a few drops of water and leaving them there a little while.
You can readily see that when the flaxseeds are shed in the field and
are met by the rain, they would stick to the feathers, feet, and beaks
of birds that came to eat the seeds. If the birds flew to another
place, as they often would, to clean their plumage, they would rub off
the flaxseeds, that mean-time had become dry again, and often the
seeds would drop off, as the bird moved about. In this way they would
get planted in new places. No doubt the sticky covering to the wet seed
also helps to anchor it to the ground and keep it from blowing away
when once it has settled down on the earth.
The flax plant that we find so useful is not wild. It is carefully
cultivated in many parts of the world and has been cultivated for so
long a time, and in so many places, that nobody knows where it first
came from. It is a pretty plant, that bears bright blue flowers.
Why do you not buy a penny’s worth of flaxseeds at the drug store
and plant them in your garden and become acquainted with this very
interesting and beautiful little plant?
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
MISTLETOE.
The mistletoe grows on trees. It has no roots of its own, but attaches
itself to the bark of the tree and sucks out the sap.
Since it lives up in trees, its seeds must be able to find lodgment in
these high places; and this the birds help them to do. The mistletoe
has light green leaves; it grows in bunches and bears white berries.
The seeds in the berries are covered by a viscid substance, and when
the birds eat the berries, some of these seeds will be apt to cling to
them and be left on the branches of some other tree.
If the seeds happen to get swallowed, that does not hurt them, for they
are not digested, but are passed out just as they were swallowed, and
they then often fall upon the tree branches, where they can grow.
The English mistletoe very often grows upon the oak tree, and from very
early times the plant was reverenced by the people, and particularly
by the Druids, who used it in their religious observances. A survival
of this old superstition about the mistletoe is found in its use to-day
at Christmas time.
[Illustration]
OTHER PLANTS WITH STICKY SEEDS OR SEED PODS.
Quite a number of plants prepare sticky coverings to their seeds or
seed pods, in order to help the seeds get away.
[Illustration]
The squirting cucumber is one of the most curious of these. It grows
wild in southern Europe, but is sometimes seen in gardens in this
country, not because of its beauty, but because it is so curious. It is
a hairy plant and not at all pretty, but when its hairy cucumber-shaped
seed pods are ripe something funny happens. The pod falls from the
vine, and through the round hole left when it fell away from its stem,
that which is inside the pod is shot out with violence. Out fly seeds
and a quantity of sticky liquid. If a bird happens to be about when
this happens, he will make haste to get far from such a queer-acting
plant; and if he was shot by it, he will carry some of the sticky seeds
with him; or he may get the seeds attached to him after they have been
shot out.
You see the squirting cucumber has two ways of sending its seeds on
their journey into the world. It shoots them some distance at the
start and also provides them with a sticky covering, so that they may
have a chance to get carried still farther.
Some plants have sticky hairs growing to their seed pods. We know that
a good many plants have their pods covered with hairs which are hooked
at the ends. Well, some are covered with hairs that have a drop of
viscid substance at the tip, instead of a hook; these hairs fasten on
quite as firmly as if they were hooked.
The pretty little twin flower, or ground vine, as it is sometimes
called, has a pair of scales growing about its seed pod, and these
scales are covered with sticky hairs.
The soft little mouse-ear chickweed, that grows everywhere in waste
places, has several species which are covered all over with fine hairs
which have a sticky tip. When the plant withers, it is easily pulled
from the ground, and as it remains sticky, even after withering, the
whole plant is often carried away by passing animals or people, and its
seeds shed in some distant place.
See if you can find some plants that have their seeds carried because
some part of the plant is sticky. There are not a great many of them;
still, if you look long enough, you will be sure to find some.
[Illustration: The twin flower.]
WANDERERS THAT FLOAT.
Some kinds of plants live in the water or on the edge of it. These
often have seeds or seed pods light enough to float. You can generally
see little seeds floating about on ponds, if you take the trouble to
look.
[Illustration: Cocoanut palms.]
Into these ponds come ducks or herons or other waterfowl. The birds
come to find something to eat, and as they swim or wade about they come
in contact with the wet seeds that cling to them. After a time the
birds, bearing the seeds on plumage, beak, or feet, fly to another pond
or marsh, and as they alight the seeds are floated off.
The wind then blows them to the shore, or else in time, if they live in
the water, they sink to the bottom and sprout.
The cocoanut is a seed that is surrounded by a strong shell and a
thick coat of fiber that protects it from the water and also makes it
light.
The nut inside this thick overcoat is hollow when ripe, excepting
for a watery liquid that we call the milk of the cocoanut. As we see
cocoanuts in stores, the outer coat has been taken off.