Plants and their children

by Frances Theodora Parsons

Tread close, and either way you tread,

Some faint, black water jets between

Lest you should bruise its curious head.

“You call it sundew; how it grows,

If with its color it have breath,

If life taste sweet to it, if death

Pain its soft petal, no man knows,

Man has no sight or sense that saith.”

THE FALL OF THE LEAF

You know that in autumn nearly all the leaves fall from the trees. To be sure, a few trees (such as the pines and hemlocks) and some plants (such as the laurel and wintergreen and partridge vine) do hold fast their leaves all winter; but these are so few as compared with the many plants which lose their leaves, that they hardly count.