But the parachute is not all,—they give them an auger by which to bore into the ground and plant themselves.
The North American crane’s bill seeds perform in a very similar way, their flowers and seed-cases being quite like those of the pelargonium.
How do you suppose North American crane’s bills came to be like South African pelargoniums?
This is a matter which needs investigating.
The pelargoniums are not as juicy as the nasturtiums, but they are somewhat juicy, and their juice has a slightly acid taste instead of being pungent, like the nasturtium juice.
Where pelargoniums live out of doors the year round they grow very large and have stems that are quite woody.
Some of them, as we know, are useful to the human race as well as ornamental, supplying food and an oil highly esteemed as a perfume.
The wood sorrels do not look much like the rest of the Geranium Family. But they do resemble it in their habit of caring for their seeds. Out in the fields you will find the small, yellow-flowered sheep sorrel, with its clover-like, sour-tasting leaves. Now hunt for a seed-pod. They are pretty little things that stand up something like Christmas candles. Touch a ripe one and it splits open down each of its five cells and shows you a row of white seeds in each. You think the seeds are not ripe because they are white, and you touch one of them. What has happened? That seed surely exploded! No, there it is—the other side of the table, not white, but dark brown. Queer performance, this. You touch another and another, and at last you get to understand it. Each seed is surrounded by an elastic white covering, and this it is that suddenly curls up, very much as the impatiens pod does, and sends the seed within it flying!
