Plants and their children

by Frances Theodora Parsons

All seeds need care and wrapping-up till they are ripe; for if they fall to the ground before they are well grown, they will not be able to start new plants.

You know that you can tell whether an apple is ripe by looking at its seeds, for the fruit and its seeds ripen together. When the apple seeds are dark brown, then the apple is ready to be eaten.

But if, in order to find out whether an apple was ripe, you were obliged always to examine its seeds, you might destroy many apples and waste many young seeds before you found what you wished; so, in order to protect its young, the apple must tell you when it is ready to be eaten in some other way than by its seeds.

How does it do this? Why, it puts off its green coat, and instead wears one of red or yellow; and from being hard to the touch, it becomes soft and yielding when you press it with your fingers. If not picked, then it falls upon the ground in order to show you that it is waiting for you; and when you bite into it, you find it juicy, and pleasant to the taste.

While eating such an apple as this, you can be sure that when you come to the inner part, which holds its seeds, you will find these brown, and ripe, and quite ready to be set free from the case which has held them so carefully all summer.

But how does the apple still further protect its young till they are ready to go out into the world?

Well, stop and think what happened one day last summer when you stole into the orchard and ate a quantity of green apples, the little seeds of which were far too white and young to be sent off by themselves.

In the first place, as soon as you began to climb the tree, had you chosen to stop and listen, you could almost have heard the green skins of those apples calling out to you, “Don’t eat us, we’re not ripe yet!”

And when you felt them with your fingers, they were hard to the touch; and this hardness said to you, “Don’t eat us, we’re not ripe yet!”

But all the same, you ate them; and the sour taste which puckered up your mouth said to you, “Stop eating us, we’re not ripe yet!”