Plants and their children

by Frances Theodora Parsons

The other early garden flowers, such as the hyacinth, crocus, daffodil, and tulip, are able to burst into beautiful blossoms only because of the care and labor with which they laid by underground provisions last year.

And in the woods at this season you find the yellow adder’s tongue, spring beauty, anemone, wake-robin, Jack-in-the-pulpit, wild ginger, and Solomon’s seal. Each of these plants has stores of food hidden in its underground stem. This may take the shape of a bulb, or a tuber, or a rootstock; but in any case it shows you at once that it is a little storehouse of food.

A collection of the different kinds of underground stems which serve as storehouses for the early-flowering plants would be quite as interesting to work over as a collection of plant packages.

DIFFERENT BUILDING PLANS

This morning let us take a stroll in the woods with the idea of noticing the different building plans used by the early flowers.

First we will go to the spot where we know the trailing arbutus is still in blossom. Pick a spray, and tell me the plan of its flower.

“There is a small green cup, or calyx, cut into five little points,” you say; “and there is a corolla made up of five flower leaves.”

But stop here one moment. Is this corolla really made up of five separate flower leaves? Are not the flower leaves joined in a tube below? If this be so, you must say that this corolla is five-lobed, or five-pointed, not that it has five flower leaves.

“And there are ten pins with dust boxes, or stamens.”