How Plants Travel
Seed Pods with Burry Coats
Did you ever think, when you pick “beggar lice” and “sand burrs” off your clothing and throw them down on the ground, that you are helping the plant mother do just what she wanted you to do with her seed baby?
She put “stickers” all over the coat of her seed baby so that it might catch hold of your dress, or of the fur of your doggie, or your cow, and be dropped in a new place where the seed baby could grow with better chances than at home near her.
When you make burr baskets out of the sticky burdock seeds, unless you burn them, you are helping the burdocks to travel.
Pods which Shoot Seeds
The mother plants of the “spider plant,” and of the pansy, and of the violet send their seed babies to new homes by using seed pods which burst open and shoot the seeds far and wide in all directions.
Tumble Weeds
Some mother plants actually carry their seed babies to new places.
The “tumble weeds” of the West dry up in Autumn, and are broken off near the roots by the wind, which carries them along over field and meadow; and everywhere they go, they are dropping seed babies in new places. If you watch them as they tumble about you will feel like laughing at their comical appearance.
Now we have come to the fairy seed babies, the—
Seed Babies with Wings
You’ve seen them often—seed babies flying about on the wings which their plant-mother gave them. Sometimes you have helped them start to fly.
Oh, yes, you have.
Don’t you remember when you pulled the fluffy head off a dandelion, and blew it to “see what time it was?”
Of course you didn’t know it, but you sent scores of dandelion seed babies floating off in the air on their fairy wings. Perhaps the wind took one up where you left off blowing, and landed it such a distance away from its old home that it might have seemed like hundreds of miles to the little thing.
Milk-weed seed babies fastened to their beautiful silky down, which is so light it floats along like a fairy’s feather, actually travel on the “wings of the wind.”
Some trees, too, give their seed babies wings. Haven’t the winged seeds of the maple fooled you into thinking they were birds or insects of some kind? It has amused you, too, to notice how far the wings of these seed babies have carried them on the wind.
“Haven’t the plant mothers provided wonderfully for their seed babies’ welfare!” exclaimed Mary Frances.
“Yes,” replied Bet; “back of the plant mother is another mother—Mother Nature. Oh, but she is wise!”
[CHAPTER XLVII]
Have a Seat on a Toad Stool
“MOTHER NATURE has taught plant mothers many secrets as to how to take care of their babies,” Bet continued, “but perhaps her most amusing trick is the wrapping of certain seed babies in seed cases which look like worms or bugs. Did you ever notice the seeds of the castor oil plant?”
“They look exactly like bugs!” Mary Frances exclaimed.
“Almost,” Bet nodded; “probably to make some bird think it’s going to have a fine meal. When the seed has been carried a little distance, the bird will discover its mistake, and drop the seed baby in a new home.”
“What a cunning trick!” exclaimed Eleanor.
“Isn’t it!” said Mary Frances. “I remember now, that I once saw on a plant what I thought was a worm, and when I tried to brush it off, it burst open, letting the seeds scatter about.”
“I wonder if that wasn’t this plant?” Bet asked as she held up a dried flower head, out of which a worm seemed to be crawling.
“That’s it!” cried Mary Frances. “What is the plant called, please?”
“It has a very long name,” Bouncing Bet replied; “too long for you to remember, I fear; but it means a ‘coiled worm,’ and shows how perfectly one plant mother has performed this comical trick.”
“I suspect all plant mothers have some trick,” Mary Frances ventured.
“That leads me to tell you about one kind of plants we’ve not yet mentioned.
They are the—