Sometimes it is such a woolly roll as you see in the next picture (Fig. [208]). This roll soon uncurls into a pretty fern (Fig. [209]).
The beech tree folds its leaves like fans (Fig. [210]). The preceding picture (Fig. [211]) shows you how carefully and cleverly the hobblebush packs its young leaves.
During their babyhood many leaves wear a hairy coat as a protection from both cold and heat; but when their green skin becomes thicker, they throw this off.
Most of these plant packages are very interesting and beautiful, and well worth your attention. I wish that during these weeks of early spring the country schools would hold exhibitions of these babes in the woods, asking each child to bring what he considers a good specimen of a plant package.
UNDERGROUND STOREHOUSES
Long ago we learned that certain plants stow away the food which they are not fitted to use at the time in those thick underground stems which most people call roots.
This food they hold over till the next year.
It is often a surprise, these spring days, to see how suddenly a little plant will burst into blossom. One does not understand how it has had time to get up such a display. Had it been obliged to depend for food upon new supplies taken in by its roots and leaves, the flower would have put off its first appearance for many a day.
So when a plant surprises you with any such sudden and early blossoms, you can be pretty sure that its food supply has been on hand all winter.
Both in the garden and in the woods you can see for yourselves that this is so. In the garden perhaps the earliest flower to appear is the lovely little snowdrop. The snowdrop’s food is stored away in the “bulb,” as we call its thick, underground stem, which lies buried in the earth.