Have you never seen the pictures of bunches of dates and other fruits all among the leafy branches at the top?
Eh! that I have, with the figures of Blacks climbing up the long poles to get at the fruit.
Now I have two more hard words for you to learn, to distinguish our two sorts of trees. We know them not merely by the difference of wood, but of seed. First tell me how many cotyledons or lobes are in a seed?
There are two in all the seeds that ever I saw.
What! was that cocoa nut the same which you bought the other day?
No, that was all in one piece.
True, Willie; and you may recollect something about a date stone.
I do, indeed; that was single also. I see I must not be so sure another time about what I know. Now I understand. Our new friends of the hard shell stems, which bear fruit at all, have seeds of one piece instead of two.
Quite so. Now a plant of one cotyledon in its seed, is said to be Monocotyledonous, while that having two lobes is Dicotyledonous; mono meaning one, and di, two.
Then my Gum tree, and Rose tree, and Sweet Pea, are all Dicotyledonous; but the nice Date Palm, the pretty Orchis, and the sweet Cocoa-nut, are Monocotyledonous. But are there any plants which are neither one nor the other?