Part 15

In the fall of the year and towards the end of summer we find a great many weeds in the woods and along the roads, sending their seeds out into the world by means of stout hooks, or else hooked hairs or sharp spines.

The agrimony is one of these. It is a common, rather pretty plant with yellow flowers, and it has a burr or seed pod, armed with hooked prickles around the waist, so to speak.

After a walk in the country through woods and fields, in the autumn, one will be likely to find a number of little things clinging to one’s clothes. Instead of merely shaking or picking them off and throwing them away, carefully collect them, and when there is time look at them.

You will very likely find yourself decorated with a number of different kinds of seeds or seed pods, that vainly hoped in you to find a means of traveling to new and better places of growth.

All these little brown things are disappointed, or would be if they could feel disappointed. But you can profit by their misfortune, and, by carefully examining the little wanderers, can learn a great many interesting and wonderful truths about the plant world in its effort to scatter its seeds.

FLAX.

The flax is a very useful plant, for the fibers of its stems are long and strong, and are spun into thread and then woven into linen.

Besides this, the seeds are useful. They contain an oil which is pressed out and is known as linseed oil. It is used a great deal by painters in mixing their paints.

When flaxseeds are wet they become very sticky on the outside. A jelly-like substance covers them, and this it is which we drink in “flaxseed tea” to cure our colds.

You can easily see this jelly-like covering by putting a few flaxseeds in a few drops of water and leaving them there a little while.

You can readily see that when the flaxseeds are shed in the field and are met by the rain, they would stick to the feathers, feet, and beaks of birds that came to eat the seeds. If the birds flew to another place, as they often would, to clean their plumage, they would rub off the flaxseeds, that mean-time had become dry again, and often the seeds would drop off, as the bird moved about. In this way they would get planted in new places. No doubt the sticky covering to the wet seed also helps to anchor it to the ground and keep it from blowing away when once it has settled down on the earth.

The flax plant that we find so useful is not wild. It is carefully cultivated in many parts of the world and has been cultivated for so long a time, and in so many places, that nobody knows where it first came from. It is a pretty plant, that bears bright blue flowers.

Why do you not buy a penny’s worth of flaxseeds at the drug store and plant them in your garden and become acquainted with this very interesting and beautiful little plant?

MISTLETOE.

The mistletoe grows on trees. It has no roots of its own, but attaches itself to the bark of the tree and sucks out the sap.

Since it lives up in trees, its seeds must be able to find lodgment in these high places; and this the birds help them to do. The mistletoe has light green leaves; it grows in bunches and bears white berries.

The seeds in the berries are covered by a viscid substance, and when the birds eat the berries, some of these seeds will be apt to cling to them and be left on the branches of some other tree.

If the seeds happen to get swallowed, that does not hurt them, for they are not digested, but are passed out just as they were swallowed, and they then often fall upon the tree branches, where they can grow.

The English mistletoe very often grows upon the oak tree, and from very early times the plant was reverenced by the people, and particularly by the Druids, who used it in their religious observances. A survival of this old superstition about the mistletoe is found in its use to-day at Christmas time.

OTHER PLANTS WITH STICKY SEEDS OR SEED PODS.

Quite a number of plants prepare sticky coverings to their seeds or seed pods, in order to help the seeds get away.

The squirting cucumber is one of the most curious of these. It grows wild in southern Europe, but is sometimes seen in gardens in this country, not because of its beauty, but because it is so curious. It is a hairy plant and not at all pretty, but when its hairy cucumber-shaped seed pods are ripe something funny happens. The pod falls from the vine, and through the round hole left when it fell away from its stem, that which is inside the pod is shot out with violence. Out fly seeds and a quantity of sticky liquid. If a bird happens to be about when this happens, he will make haste to get far from such a queer-acting plant; and if he was shot by it, he will carry some of the sticky seeds with him; or he may get the seeds attached to him after they have been shot out.

You see the squirting cucumber has two ways of sending its seeds on their journey into the world. It shoots them some distance at the start and also provides them with a sticky covering, so that they may have a chance to get carried still farther.

Some plants have sticky hairs growing to their seed pods. We know that a good many plants have their pods covered with hairs which are hooked at the ends. Well, some are covered with hairs that have a drop of viscid substance at the tip, instead of a hook; these hairs fasten on quite as firmly as if they were hooked.

The pretty little twin flower, or ground vine, as it is sometimes called, has a pair of scales growing about its seed pod, and these scales are covered with sticky hairs.

The soft little mouse-ear chickweed, that grows everywhere in waste places, has several species which are covered all over with fine hairs which have a sticky tip. When the plant withers, it is easily pulled from the ground, and as it remains sticky, even after withering, the whole plant is often carried away by passing animals or people, and its seeds shed in some distant place.

See if you can find some plants that have their seeds carried because some part of the plant is sticky. There are not a great many of them; still, if you look long enough, you will be sure to find some.

WANDERERS THAT FLOAT.