And you can look at a stalk brought from the cornfield that will show you how the trunk of the palm tells us that this tree began life with only one seed leaf.
“WELL DONE, LITTLE STEM”
It is wonderful how much there is to learn about everything.
We began this book with an apple, and I had no more idea than you that that apple was going to keep us busy for days.
And then the apple reminded us of its cousins, the pear and plum and peach and cherry and rose. And if we had not stopped short, we should have been introduced to so many more cousins that we should have had neither room nor time for anything else.
From fruits we went to seeds.
At first it seemed almost as though we ought to finish up the seeds in two or three readings; but this did not prove to be the case.
The mere naming of the different ways in which seeds went traveling, covered so many pages that it was all we could do to find time to tell how a few of the baby plants were cared for, and how they made their way out of the seed shell into the world.
But when we came to roots, we felt there would be no temptation to loiter by the way, for roots seemed rather dismal things to talk about. Yet it took some little time to show the different uses of a root, and to talk about air roots and water roots, as well as earth roots. It was not altogether easy to make clear just how the little root hairs keep acids on hand in which to melt the solid earth food which their throats are too delicate to swallow. And it was quite a long story when we came to the dodder, which roots in the stems of living plants, and steals all its food from them; and to those orchids whose long roots swing from tree branches and draw their nourishment from the air.