Plants and their children

by Frances Theodora Parsons

All these flowers have only one real pistil,—one pistil which may persuade you, by the way in which it separates above, into thinking that there are more than one. So you must be on your guard in this respect, and remember that flowers have a way of playing tricks with all but the most wide-awake of boys and girls. Look long and carefully before you declare that a flower has only one pistil.

Fig. 193

Here we see half of a buttercup (Fig. [194]). The buttercup has a great many entirely separate pistils. Look sharply at the picture, and you will see them crowded upon the little thimble-shaped object in the middle of the blossom. Do not confuse them with the stamens, for the buttercup has also a great many stamens. When buttercup time comes round, I want every one of you to look at these many pistils and stamens.

Fig. 194

Fig. 195

The next picture (Fig. [195]) shows you a strawberry. In the strawberry blossom the pistils are so small, and so crowded, and so hidden by the many stamens, that it is not easy to see them; and so I show you the full-grown berry, with little pistils scattered all over its surface. Each of those tiny objects which stand out on the strawberry is a separate pistil.

Whenever you look at a flower, I want you to remember that its bright flower leaves will soon fade and fall, and that its stamens will lose their pollen and wither away, but that the pistil or pistils will remain, turning at last into the ripened fruit,—the fruit which is the end, the aim, the object, of the plant’s life.