Plants and their children

by Frances Theodora Parsons

Fig. 32

You can be pretty sure that any fruit so gayly colored as to make us look at it twice, is trying to persuade some one—some boy or girl, or bird, or perhaps even some bear—to come and eat it.

You have not forgotten, I hope, why these fruits are so anxious to be eaten? You remember that when their seeds become ripe, and ready to make new plants, then they put on bright colors that say for them, “Come and eat us, for our little seeds want to get out of their prison!”

Once upon a time these seeds did not find their cozy seed cases a prison. So once upon a time the baby robins were content to stay safe in their nest. And once upon a time all the playground you needed was a little corner behind your mother’s chair. But seeds, like birds and babies, outgrow their surroundings, and need more room.

Fig. 33

Here is a tall shrub with bright-colored leaves, and clusters of dark red fruit that grow high above our heads (Fig. [33]). It looks something like certain materials used in fancywork. This shrub is called the sumac; and if you pick and pull apart one of its fruit clusters, you find that it is made up of a quantity of seeds that are covered with little red hairs. There is nothing soft and juicy about the fruit of the sumac. Whether it is ever used as food by the birds, I do not know. I wish some child would make it his business to find out about this. Some of you are sure to live near a clump of sumacs. By watching them closely for a few weeks, you ought to discover if any birds feed upon their fruit.

If you do make any such discovery, I hope you will write a letter telling me of it; and then, if another edition of this book is published, I shall be able to tell other children more about the fruit of the sumac than I can tell you to-day.

There are many interesting things about plants yet to be found out; and you children will find it far pleasanter to make your own discoveries, using your own bright eyes, than to read about the discoveries of other people. Every field, each bit of woods, the road we know so well leading from home to the schoolhouse, and even the city squares and parks, are full of interesting things that as yet we have never seen, even though we may have been over the ground a hundred times before.

Now let us leave the lane, and strike into the woods in search of new fruits. This morning we will look especially for those fruits which by their bright colors and pleasant looks seem to be calling out to whomsoever it may concern, “Come and eat us!”