Plants and their children

by Frances Theodora Parsons

Fig. 160

Within the circle of white leaves you see a quantity of what we named “pins with dust boxes.” You remember that these dust boxes hold the powdery material which is as wonderful as Cinderella’s fairy godmother in its power to do strange and surprising things.

And in the very center of the flower you find a single “pin,” as we called it, with a flat top which is not a dust box.

But you remember that at the foot of this pin is another sort of box, a seedbox (Fig. [161]).

And you have not forgotten that it is on the flat top of this pin that the bee brushes the yellow dust which gives new life to the seed below, and turns the little case of the seedbox into the juicy cherry.

So now what do we find in the cherry blossom? We find

1. A green cup cut above into separate leaves.

2. A circle of white leaves.

3. Some pins with dust boxes.

4. One pin with a seedbox.