SEED SAILBOATS
On your way to school these fall days, often you notice certain white, silky things floating lazily through the air. Sometimes you catch one of these little objects, and blow it away again with a message to a friend. Or perhaps you wish upon it. At least, this is what I did as a child. Life in those days was full of these mysterious “wishes.” A white horse, a hay cart, the first star, a wandering thistle down,—each promised the possible granting of one’s most secret wish.
That the thistle down comes from the thistle plant, you know. But not all the silky things that look like fairy sailboats are thistle down, for many plants beside the thistle let loose these tiny air ships.
Have you ever wondered where they come from, what they are doing? Or do they seem to you so lazy, so drifting, so aimless, that you doubt if they are going anywhere in particular, or have really anything to do?
But by this time you have learned that plants have better reasons for their actions than you had dreamed before you began to pay them some attention. You have discovered that they dress their flowers in gay colors so that the bees may be tempted to visit them and powder them with golden dust. You have learned that they make their fruits juicy and delicious so that boys and girls and birds may be persuaded to carry off their seeds; and the better you know them, the more certain you feel that they manage their affairs with much common sense, that they are not likely to take time and trouble for nothing.
Fig. 48
So let us look closely at some of these air ships, and try to guess their errand.
I hope that some time ago you were told to get together as many different kinds as you could find, and to bring them here this morning.