Flowers and their friends

by Margaret Warner Morley

So, you see, flowers are nothing but leaves after all,—very much changed leaves, to be sure, but yet just leaves.

Sometimes when plants and animals have changed into a new form, they change back again. We know some plants which once had petals but which have again lost their petals and gone back to a form which has no petals. Such backward changes we call retrogression, and it is sometimes difficult to find out whether a flower with no petals is a primitive form which for some reason has not changed or whether it is one which has changed and gone back again. Usually, though, we can find traces of petals and sepals in flowers which have retrogressed.

You see, a flower depends upon its surroundings for its shape. If its surroundings (and of course this includes its insect visitors) are such as to favor its growth in the line of petals, it does so. But if for some reason it becomes easier for it to grow and be fertilized in some other way, perhaps by making abundance of light pollen which is blown by the wind, as in the maple trees, then it may gradually lose its petals, as it depends less and less on insects and more and more on the wind for cross-fertilization. Nothing in life stands still; it is always moving,—going on or going back. And this, we know, is just the same in human life.

We cannot stand still; we must keep growing wiser and stronger and better, or else we must do the opposite.

SIGNS OF OTHER TIMES.

In the beginning flowers seem to have had their petals all separate from each other. Some do still, and these we call polypetalous, because “poly-” means many, and they have many petals. But other flowers, like our morning-glory, have no separate petals; all are grown together into a tube with a bright border.

But this tube and border tell us a little story if we are able to hear it.

They tell us of the time when the morning-glory had several petals. More than this, they tell us just how many it had. If we were to guess we should probably say five, because it seems so fond of the number five, with its five nectaries, five nectar guides, five stamens, and five sepals.