HOW MOTHER NATURE MAKES NEW FLOWERS.
Once upon a time there lived a little plant in a marshy place. We will call it Primus, not because that was the very first form of the plant, for it was not, but because that was its form when we first saw it.
It had five small yellow petals, five small stamens, and an ovary.
When its seeds were ripe, along came a great wind and blew them away from the marsh upon the dry land at the edge.
Poor little seeds, they were out of their familiar wet marsh and they could not grow. But they did their best. Some of them managed to sprout, but soon they found the earth too dry and the sun too hot; so they said, “We will turn to other work; we will help the other plants and not try to grow ourselves.”
So they changed into gases and minerals and other substances. But a few of the seeds continued to grow.
They blossomed and bore seeds, but they were not just like the plants in the marsh. Mother Nature had helped them get a tougher skin and taught them how to shut tightly their pores in dry weather, so that the water within them could not escape.
You see, they were already different from their parents, though you might not have noticed it if you had seen them, the difference was so slight. The seeds of these new plants sprouted the next season. They did not have a hard time to grow. They knew just what to do, and the best and strongest of them grew a few hairs to help cover up the pores, so the water would not go out too fast.
It happened to be a very hot, dry season, and all the plants but these hairy ones stopped growing. They changed into gases and minerals and other substances to help the other plants. The hairy people got through the dry season very well. They set a good many seeds, and these seeds sprouted. The new plants remembered about the hairs and had plenty of them. Some were covered all over with a soft down.
And it was well they were, for it was a very hot, dry season, and all but the downy ones stopped growing and changed into minerals and gases and other substances to help the others. The seeds of the downy plants blew far over the dry land, far away from the marsh; but they had learned to live in the dry soil, and if you had found these downy people, you would hardly have known they were descended from the smooth, juicy, large-leaved marsh plants. Their stems were hard and tough and their leaves stiff and small. We can no longer call them Primus, they are so changed.
Let us call them Secundus. Secundus had small yellow flowers, like the marsh plants it was descended from. But one day some of the seeds of Secundus blew into the edge of a wood where the soil was rich and the air damp. This just suited the Secundus seeds, and they grew into very thrifty plants indeed. They had so much sap and grew so luxuriantly that their petals were twice as large as was usual with Secundus petals. These fine showy flowers also possessed a great deal of nectar, they had so much sap. Of course the bees came to them, and they were well fertilized. They set many seeds. The next year these strong seeds were able to grow even when their neighbors were not, and the plants that came from these seeds also had large showy flowers.
These stronger plants held their own, you may be sure, and at last there was more of them than of the small-flowered plants. It was well for them this was so, for there came several bad seasons when nothing was just right for these plants. It was cold and stormy, and only the very strongest lived through it. But they managed to survive, and their flowers were large and showy.
All the weaker plants with smaller flowers were killed out, and only these large-flowered ones remained. They were very different from their ancestors the marsh plants, and we shall have to call them Tertius.
One day some of the seeds of Tertius were blown into a new kind of soil; they sucked up the juices of this new soil, and lo! some of their flowers opened white instead of yellow. It so happened that the white-flowered plants were stronger than the others. The bees liked them, too; for, being so strong and full of sap, they made plenty of honey. So these white-flowered ones increased in numbers very greatly. At last only the white ones could be found; the yellow ones had gradually given way before them until no yellow ones were left.
So we will call the white-flowered people Quartus.
Quartus lived a long time, each year bearing seeds, the strongest and best of which grew up and bore flowers.
One day some of Quartus’ seeds were blown into a hot, sandy place; this almost killed them, but some of them managed to grow.
Their leaves were smaller and stiffer than ever before, but they had a great many of them, and their flowers were large and white. They grew to like the sandy soil, and what they got from it changed their sap in some way so their petals were delicately tinged with pink. The bees liked these pink flowers; perhaps their honey was a little richer; perhaps they could see them better. However that may be, the bees almost deserted the white-blossomed plants and visited the pink ones. So the white flowers set few seeds and the pink flowers many. When the seeds sprouted, the pink ones were the strongest, because in their change of color there was somehow added a change in strength; they were stronger than the white flowers. They grew fast and took the materials from the earth and the air; and when the white flowers saw this, they said, “It is their turn now,” so they changed into gases and minerals and other things and helped the pink flowers to grow.
Soon there were no more white flowers to be seen; they had stopped growing, and only the pink ones kept on, so we shall have to call these pink flowers Quintus.
But a great danger threatened Quintus. Cows and goats and sheep bit off their leaves. They ate so much of them that many plants were killed outright. Only the stiffest and hardest were left to blossom and set seed. The seeds of these plants with the stiff leaves and stems grew into other stiff-stemmed and stiff-leaved plants. The cattle browsed the tenderest of these and again left the stiffest. This went on for many years, the plants growing stiffer and harder each year. Some of them got so stiff and hard that they threw out prickles all over their stems.
These prickly ones were not eaten, and in time you would have found them grown into woody bushes with prickly stems.
We shall have to call these Sextus.
Sextus spread all over the sandy plains. Hardly any other plant was to be seen. The strong Sextus seeds sprouted and took the materials in the earth and the air, and the other seeds that happened to be blown among them did not grow; they changed into gases and minerals and other substances and helped the Sextus plants to grow.
One day some Sextus seeds blew upon good, rich, damp soil, and there they sprouted and grew. They had plenty of water, and there were no cattle to disturb them; so those with the fewest prickles were the best off, because they could use the food material to make larger flowers instead of prickles. So the plants with fewer prickles had larger flowers and better seeds, and these seeds sprouted and grew, and the others gave way before them. In the course of time these plants growing on the rich soil lost their prickles, and their flowers were large and very deep pink; in fact, some of them were a bright red.
These bright red flowers attracted the bees, and so they lived on and set seed. These we must call Septimus.
For some reason some of the seeds of the Septimus flowers developed unusually thrifty plants.
These plants had flowers with petals so full of sap they overlapped, and finally, just because they were so full of the growing spirit, the edges of the petals grew together.
Finally, the flowers with the edges grown together were the most successful. The tube their flowers made kept the nectar for the bees, and the bees liked to go into these red bells. You see what had happened: the flowers were no longer polypetalous. Their petals had grown together; they were gamopetalous. Their corollas formed snug tubes, something like a morning-glory corolla, for the bees.
We shall have to call these people Octamus.
And we will not follow them any farther, only be sure they kept on changing ever and ever. Whenever the seeds fell in a new soil, they had to change or die. The reason they could change so is because no two things are ever just alike, and out of a great many plants some might be fitted to survive in the new surroundings. These would live, and their descendants would be like them, but they would be different from their ancestors.
In some such way, no doubt, the many different kinds of flowers have come into existence.
If you ask me for the exact name of our plant that has changed so many times, I cannot tell you, for I do not know.
But that, we believe, is Mother Nature’s way of making new flowers.