Plants and their children

by Frances Theodora Parsons

Do you know what each “pussy,” or tassel, is made up of?

Each tassel is made up of many tiny flowers.

But willow flowers are built on quite a different plan from cherry flowers. If you pick apart one of these tassels, and examine a single blossom, you will find it hard to believe that it is a flower at all.

On one branch the tassels are all golden yellow. The flowers that make up these yellow tassels have neither flower leaves nor pistils. Each blossom has two stamens which are fastened to a little fringed leaf, and nothing more. Such a flower, much magnified, is given in the picture (Fig. [197]). The golden color comes from the yellow pollen which has been shaken from the dust boxes.

The other branch is covered with silvery green tassels. Each flower in these tassels is made up of a single pistil, which is also fastened to a little fringed leaf (Fig. [198]).

Fig. 198

So you see the building plan used by one kind of pussy-willow flowers is nothing but two stamens; while the plan used by the other kind is still simpler, it is nothing but one pistil.

The golden dust is carried by the bees from the willows which bear dust boxes to those other willows whose flowers have only seedboxes.

When they have given to the bees their pollen, the yellow tassels fade away; but the silvery green tassels, on account of their seedboxes, grow large and ripe, turning into the fruit shown in Fig. [62], p. [61]; and this fruit is one of the kind which scatters its seeds abroad by fastening them to silky sails.