Hundreds of other plants attach these little sails to their seeds. You can hardly walk a step in the fall along the country roads without meeting these masses of feathery fruit made up of just such seeds. So now we come back to our questions, “Where are they going? What are they doing?”
Fig. 59
Fig. 60
And as you have learned why the apple tree and the partridge vine pack their seeds in pretty cases, and why the burdock and the stick-tight cover theirs with hooks and bristles, you ought to answer these questions very easily. You found that those plants wished to send their little seeds abroad, so that they might get a better foothold in some piece of earth that was not used already by plants hungry for the very food that they most needed.
This is just what the thistle and milkweed and dandelion and aster want for their seeds; and this is why they fasten them to little sails, and send them far away on a voyage of discovery.
WINGED SEEDS
Fig. 61