Blow on this lovely little sphere, and away will fly the little tufted fruits, some one way and some another. If there is any breeze stirring, there is no knowing how far they will go. It is not strange, then, that dandelions spring up almost everywhere. See what a vast number of fruits must go sailing about, all over the country, on a dry midsummer’s day. It is true, not half of them grow up into plants to make more dandelions, but a great many of them do.
In the same way, the beautiful asters of our woods, with their flowers of yellow or purplish disks, and lovely rays of white or purple, as large as roses, let their little fruits fly away from their heads as soon as ripe and dry.
There are about as many different kinds of fruits as there are of flowers. The plants of the bean family, for instance, have fruits like the bean pods. These pods, when ripe and dry, split open at the two edges, and then the beans or seeds drop out. Do you know the pods of the honey-locust trees,—large, broad, thin, and sweet? Clover too belongs to the bean family. You can find the tiny pods in the dry heads of clover, if you will pick out the little withered flowers and open them.
Some fruits have a kind of wings. Such are the fruits of our beautiful maple tree; and very pretty are these maple keys, as they are called, when they hang in clusters from the branches, and dangle among the leaves. At the end, where they are joined, there is in each key a thick, hard, round swelling, in which is the seed. When the fruit is ripe and dry it falls off, and we may often see the pair of keys flying away together. As they are light, they go whirling in the wind, sometimes to a great distance. The fruit of the ash-tree looks like that of the maple, and also hangs in bunches; but each fruit is a single key.
These are but a few of the many kinds of fruits to be found on plants, each in itself a curiosity and a beauty; and how much we fairly owe to them is scarcely ever in our thoughts. If we consider but wheat alone, how valuable to us is its little fruit, the simple grain; to say nothing of the fruits of other grasses, such as rice, rye, oats, and the large and generous ears of Indian-corn.
Nor must the cotton-plant be forgotten, whose fruit does not indeed feed, but clothes our bodies, enters into countless uses in every household, is indispensable on every craft that sails the sea, and inseparable from so many industries on land and water. The fruit of the cotton-plant is a pod, which, bursting open, reveals a mass of white woolly fibres, enveloping and clinging to the seeds. This is the beautiful and useful cotton.
Phrase Exercise.
1. Merge eventually.—2. Perpetuates its kind.—3. Charming expression.—4. Usually sheds its gay attire.—5. Shorn of its bridal ornaments.—6. Contrivance to effect conveyance.—7. Surrounded by an elevated circled plume.—8. Indispensable on every craft.—9. Inseparable from so many industries.