Seed Pods with Burry Coats
Did you ever think, when you pick “beggar lice” and “sand burrs” off your clothing and throw them down on the ground, that you are helping the plant mother do just what she wanted you to do with her seed baby?
She put “stickers” all over the coat of her seed baby so that it might catch hold of your dress, or of the fur of your doggie, or your cow, and be dropped in a new place where the seed baby could grow with better chances than at home near her.
When you make burr baskets out of the sticky burdock seeds, unless you burn them, you are helping the burdocks to travel.
Pods which Shoot Seeds
The mother plants of the “spider plant,” and of the pansy, and of the violet send their seed babies to new homes by using seed pods which burst open and shoot the seeds far and wide in all directions.
Tumble Weeds
Some mother plants actually carry their seed babies to new places.
The “tumble weeds” of the West dry up in Autumn, and are broken off near the roots by the wind, which carries them along over field and meadow; and everywhere they go, they are dropping seed babies in new places. If you watch them as they tumble about you will feel like laughing at their comical appearance.
Now we have come to the fairy seed babies, the—