Part 17

Flowers that need the visits of moths, or other insects that fly by night, are white or pale yellow. These colors show best at night. Flowers that need the visits of day-flying insects, are mostly red, blue, orange, purple, scarlet.

There are some plants, as the grass, which have no sweet perfume and no gay petals. I have told you of flowers which are only a small brown scale with a bunch of stamens and pistils held upon it. And they have no perfumes. These flowers want no insect partners. Their partner is the summer wind! The wind blows the pollen of one plant to another. That fashion suits these plants very well.

So, by means of insect or wind partners, the golden pollen is carried far and wide, and seeds ripen.

But what about the bird partners? Where do they come in?

If the ripe seed fell just at the foot of the parent plant, and grew there, you can see that plants would be too much crowded. They would spread very little. Seeds must be carried from place to place. Some light seeds, as those of the thistle, have a plume. The maple seeds have wings. By these the wind blows them along.

But most seeds are too heavy to be wind driven. They must be carried. For this work the plant takes its partner, the bird.

To please the eye of the bird, and attract it to the seed, the plant has gay-colored seeds. Also it has often gay-colored seed cases. The rose haws, you know, are vivid red. The juniper has a bright blue berry. The smilax has a black berry. The berries of the mistletoe are white, of the mulberry purple.

These colors catch the eye of the bird. Down he flies to swallow the seed, case, and all. Also many seed cases, or covers, are nice food to eat. They are nice for us. We like them. But first of all they were spread out for the bird’s table.

Birds like cherries, plums, and strawberries. Did you ever watch a bird picking blackberries? The thorns do not bother him. He swallows the berries fast,--pulp and seed.

You have been told of the hard case which covers the soft or germ part of the seed, and its seed-leaf food. This case does not melt up in the bird’s crop or gizzard, as the soft food does. So when it falls to the ground the germ is safe, and can sprout and grow.

Birds carry seeds in this way from land to land, as well as from field to field. They fly over the sea and carry seeds to lonely islands, which, but for the birds, might be barren.

So by means of its insect partners, the plant’s seed germs grow, and perfect seeds. By means of the bird partners, the seeds are carried from place to place. Thus many plants grow, and men are clothed, and warmed, and fed.

FOOTNOTES:

See Nature Reader, No. 2, Lessons on Ants.

No. 1, Lesson 18.

LESSON XI.

AIR, WATER, AND SAND PLANTS.

Most of the plants which you see about you grow in earth or soil. You have heard your father say that the grass in some fields was scanty because the soil was poor. You have been told that wheat and corn would not grow in some other field, because the soil was not rich enough.

You understand that. The plant needs good soil, made up of many kinds of matter. These minerals are the plant’s food. Perhaps you have helped your mother bring rich earth from the forest, to put about her plants.

But beside these plants growing in good earth in the usual way, there are plants which choose quite different places in which to grow. There are air-plants, water-plants, sand-plants. Have you seen all these kinds of plants?

You have, no doubt, seen plants growing in very marshy, wet places, as the rush, the iris, and the St. John’s-wort. Then, too, you have seen plants growing right in the water, as the water-lilies, yellow and white; the little green duck-weed; and the water crow-foot.

If you have been to the sea-shore, you have seen green, rich-looking plants, growing in a bank of dry sand. In the West and South, you may find fine plants growing in what seem to be drifts, or plains of clear sand.

Air-plants are less common. Let us look at them first. There are some plants which grow upon other plants and yet draw no food from the plant on which they grow. Such plants put forth roots, leaves, stems, blossoms, but all their food is drawn from the air.

I hope you may go and see some hot-house where orchids are kept. You will see there splendid plants growing on a dead branch, or some other dry thing, high up in the air.

Did you ever see a piece of mistletoe? It grows on some tree. It has nice green leaves and white berries. That the mistletoe draws all its food from the air has been proved. It thrives as well on a dead tree as on a live one. A Frenchman, who loved to study plants, made a mistletoe plant grow on a cannon ball. Another mistletoe sprouted and grew from a seed held out on the point of a copper needle.

Thus, you see, these air-plants gain all their food from the air.

Water-plants will seem to you to grow in a more natural way. Most of them are rooted in the earth at the bottom of the pond, or ditch, where they grow. As the blossoms form, the flower stem grows long, and the flower rises to the top of the water.

There the lovely blossom floats about in the sunshine. It is moored by its long stem to the root, as a boat is moored by a rope. When the seeds are ripe, the flower stem sinks down again. The leaf stems rise to the top of the water. There the leaves lie spread out, to breathe the air.