Plants and their children

by Frances Theodora Parsons

The dark outside circle is the bark.

The rings within this are the wood. Each year one of these woody rings is added to the tree, the last ring of all lying next to the bark; so, if you count these, you can find out how many years the tree has lived.

In the center we see the soft stuff called pith.

What do these three divisions show?

The trunk of the palm in the next picture (Fig. [128]) is like the stem of the corn. The wood is not gathered in rings, but is scattered through the soft part in thread-like bundles, so that we cannot tell just the age of the tree.

Fig. 128

And what else do you know about the palm?

Why, you know that it came into the world with but one seed leaf. If it had had more than one, its stems would have had woody rings such as we see in the fir.

In the schoolroom you cannot see palms and firs; but you can find a log in a wood pile which will show you just such woody rings as prove that the fir tree had more than one seed leaf.