Part Ii—Young Plants

HOW THE BABY PLANT LIVES

When these little seeds at last find a good resting place, what do you think happens to them? They grow into new plants, of course. But how does this come about? How does a seed turn into a plant?

I could hardly expect you to guess this, any more than I could have expected you to guess how the apple flower changes into the apple fruit. I will tell you a little about it; and then I hope your teacher will show you real seeds and real plants, and prove to you that what I have said is really so.

Of course, you believe already that I try to tell you the exact truth about all these things. But people far wiser than I have been mistaken in what they thought was true; and so it will be well for you to make sure, with your own eyes, that I am right in what I say.

If you should cut in two the seed of that beautiful flower the garden peony, and should look at it very closely through a good magnifying glass, you would find a tiny object such as you see in the half seed shown in this picture (Fig. 84). Both your eyes and your glass need to be very good to show you that this little object is a baby peony plant. Fig. 85 gives the little plant as it would look if taken out of the seed.

Every ripe seed holds a baby plant; and to become a grown-up plant, it needs just what boy and girl babies need,—food and drink and air.

But shut up so tight in its seed shell, how can it get these?

Well, in this peony seed its food is close at hand. It is packed away inside the seed, all about the little plant. In the picture (Fig. 84), everything except the little white spot, which shows the plant, is baby food,—food that is all prepared to be eaten by a delicate little plant, and that is suited to its needs just as milk is suited to the needs of your little sister or brother.

The little leaves of the baby plant take in the food that is needed to make it grow fat and strong.

Now, how does the baby plant get water to drink?

I have asked your teacher to soak over night some peas that have been dried for planting, and to bring to school to-day a handful of these, and also a handful which have not been soaked. She will pass these about, and you can see how different the soaked ones are from the others. Those that have not been in the water look dried and wrinkled and old, almost dead in fact; while those which have been soaked are nearly twice as large. They look fat, and fresh, and full of life. Now, what has happened to them?

Why, all night long they have been sucking in water through tiny openings in the seed shell; and this water has so refreshed them, and so filled the wrinkled coats and swelled them out, that they look almost ready to burst.

So you see, do you not, how the water manages to get inside the seed so as to give the baby plant a drink?

Usually it is rather late in the year when seeds fall to the earth. During the winter the baby plant does not do any drinking; for then the ground is frozen hard, and the water cannot reach it. But when the warm spring days come, the ice melts, and the ground is full of moisture. Then the seed swells with all the water it sucks in, and the baby plant drinks, drinks, drinks, all day long.

You scarcely need ask how it keeps warm, this little plant. It is packed away so snugly in the seed shell, and the seed shell is so covered by the earth, and the earth much of the time is so tucked away beneath a blanket of snow, that usually there is no trouble at all about keeping warm.

But how, then, does it get air?

Well, of course, the air it gets would not keep alive a human baby. But a plant baby needs only a little air; and usually enough to keep it in good condition makes its way down through the snow and earth to the tiny openings in the seed shell. To be sure, if the earth above is kept light and loose, the plant grows more quickly, for then the air reaches it with greater ease.

So now you see how the little plant inside the peony seed gets the food and drink and air it needs for its growth.

In the picture above (Fig. 86) you get a side view of the baby plant of the morning-glory, its unripe seed being cut in two. As you look at it here, its queer shape reminds you of an eel. But if instead of cutting through the seed, you roll it carefully between your fingers, and manage to slip off its coat, and if then you take a pin and carefully pick away the whitish, jelly-like stuff which has been stored as baby food, you will find a tiny green object which through a magnifying glass looks like the next picture (Fig. 87). The narrow piece pointing downward is the stem from which grows the root. Above this are two leaves.

This baby plant is a very fascinating thing to look at. I never seem to tire of picking apart a young seed for the sake of examining through a glass these delicate bright-green leaves. It seems so wonderful that the vine which twines far above our heads, covered with glorious flowers, should come from this green speck.

As this morning-glory is a vine which lives at many of your doorsteps, I hope you will not fail to collect its seeds, and look at their baby plants. When these are very young, still surrounded by a quantity of baby food, you will not be able to make them out unless you carry them to your teacher and borrow her glass; but when the seed is ripe, and the little plant has eaten away most of the surrounding food, it grows so big that you can see it quite plainly with your own eyes.

A SCHOOLROOM GARDEN

I want you children to do a little gardening in the schoolroom. You will enjoy this, I am sure.

When I was a child, I took great delight in the experiments that I am going to suggest to you; and now that I am grown up, I find they please me even more than they did years ago.

During the past week I have been doing this sort of gardening; and I have become so interested in the plant babies which I have helped into the world, that I have not been at all ready to stop playing with them, even for the sake of sitting down to tell you about them.

To start my garden, I had first to get some seeds. So I put on my hat and went down to the little shop in the village, half of which is given up to tailor work, while the other half is devoted to flower raising. The gray-bearded florist tailor who runs this queer little place was greatly interested when he heard that I wanted the seeds so that I might tell you children something of their strange ways.

“Seeds air mighty interestin’ things,” he said. “Be you young or be you old, there’s nothin’ sets you thinkin’ like a seed.”

Perhaps the florist tailor had been fortunate in his friends; for I have known both grown-up people and children who year after year could see the wonder of seed and baby plant, of flower and fruit, without once stopping to say, “What brings about these changes?”

To “set thinking” some people would take an earthquake or an avalanche; but when this sort of thing is needed to start their brains working, the “thinking” is not likely to be good for much.

But I hope that some of you will find plenty to think about in the seeds which your teacher is going to show you; and I hope that these thoughts may be the beginning of an interest and curiosity that will last as long as you live.

The seeds which I got that morning were those of the bean, squash, pea, and corn; and your teacher has been good enough to get for you these same seeds, and she will show you how to do with them just what I have been doing this past week.

First, I filled a pot with finely sifted earth, and planted the different seeds; then I filled a glass with water, floated some cotton wool upon its surface, and in this wool laid some beans; and then my garden planting was done.

During the following days I kept the earth in the pot slightly moist. The cotton wool in the glass of water did this for itself.

And how carefully I watched my two little gardens!

For three days the pot of earth kept its secret. Nothing happened there, so far as I could see. But the beans that were laid upon the cotton wool grew fat and big by the second day, just like those that your teacher soaked over night; and by the third day their seed coats had ripped open a little way, just as your coat would rip open if it were tightly buttoned up and suddenly you grew very fat; and out of the rip in the seed coat peeped a tiny white thing, looking like the bill of a chick that is pecking its way out of the eggshell which has become too small to hold it.

Very quickly this little white tip grew longer. It curved over and bent downward, piercing its way through the cotton wool into the water.

About this time the pot garden began to show signs of a disturbance. Here and there I saw what looked like the top of a thick green hoop (Fig. 88).

What had happened, do you think?

Why, first this bean had sucked in from the damp earth so much water that it had grown too fat and big for the seed coat; and it had torn this open, just like the other bean, pushing out its little white tip; and this tip had bent down into the earth and taken a good hold there, lengthening into a real root, and sending out little root hairs that fastened it down still more firmly.

But it was not satisfied to do all its growing below. Its upper part now straightened itself out, and started right up into the air. From a hoop it turned into a stem which lifted the bean clear above the earth (Fig. 89).

This bean was no longer the round object we usually call by that name; for its two halves had opened and spread outward, and from between these two halves grew a pair of young leaves.

As these leaves grew larger, the two half-beans began to shrink, growing smaller and more withered all the time (Fig. 90).

Why was this, do you suppose?

To make clear the reason of this, to show just why the two halves of the bean grew smaller as the rest of the young bean plant grew larger, I must go back a way.

Turn to the picture of the peony seed (Fig. 84). There you can see how the baby plant is packed away in the midst of a quantity of baby food. And in the picture of the morning-glory seed (Fig. 86) you see the same thing.

You remember that day by day the baby plant ate more and more of this food, and kept growing stronger and bigger, and that all this time the store of food kept growing smaller and smaller.

Now, if you cut open the bean, you do not see a tiny plant set in the midst of a store of food.

Why is this? This is because the baby bean plant keeps its food in its own leaves.

The seed coat of the bean is filled by these leaves, for each half of the bean is really a seed leaf. In these two thick leaves is stored all the food that is necessary to the life of the baby plant; and because of all this food which they hold, the bean plant is able to get a better start in life than many other young plants.

If you soak and strip off its seed coat, and pull apart the two thick leaves, you will find a tiny pair of new leaves already started (Fig. 91); but you will see nothing of the sort in the seed of the morning-glory, for the reason that this is not so well stored with baby food as to be able to do more than get its seed leaves well under way.

The pea, like the bean, is so full of food, that it also is able to take care of a second pair of leaves.

But now to go back to the young bean plant in the schoolroom garden. We were wondering why the two halves of the bean, which are really the first pair of leaves, kept growing thinner and smaller as the second pair grew larger.

Perhaps you guess now the reason for this. These first leaves, called the seed leaves, feed all the rest of the young bean plant.

Of course, as they keep on doing this, they must themselves shrink away; but they do not cease with their work till the plant is able to take care of itself.

By this time, however, the seed leaves have nothing left to live upon. They die of starvation, and soon fade and disappear.

So now you understand just what has happened to the leaves that once were so fat and large.

And I hope you will remember the difference between the seed of the morning-glory and that of the bean,—how the morning-glory packs the baby food inside the seed, of course, but outside the baby plant; while the bean packs it inside the two seed leaves, which are so thick that there is no room for anything else within the seed coat.

But really, to understand all that I have been telling you, you must see it for yourselves; you must hold in your hands the dried bean; you must examine it, and make sure that its seed shell is filled entirely by the baby plant; you must see it grow plump and big from the water which it has been drinking; you must watch with sharp eyes for that first little rip in the seed coat, and for the putting-out of the tiny tip, which grows later into stem and root; you must notice how the bent stem straightens out, and lifts the thick seed leaves up into the air; and you must observe how that other pair of leaves, which grows from between the seed leaves, becomes larger and larger as the seed leaves grow smaller and thinner, and how, when the little plant is able to hold its own in the world, the seed leaves die away.

And if day by day you follow this young life, with the real wish to discover its secret, you will begin to understand what the wise old florist tailor meant when he said,—

“Be you young or be you old, there’s nothin’ sets you thinkin’ like a seed.”

A SCHOOLROOM GARDEN (Concluded)

The picture at the top of this page (Fig. 92) shows you how the young squash plant comes into the world; for you remember that in my pot garden I planted some squash seeds. And I hope that in your schoolroom garden you will watch this plant as it makes its first appearance.

The baby food of the squash vine, like that of the bean, is stored away inside the seed leaves, which on this account are so large that they quite fill the seed shell. They are not so thick as those of the bean, but thick enough to hold all the nourishment that is needed to keep the young plant alive and hearty until it is big enough to shift for itself.

Very soon after this seed is laid in warm, moist earth, its little plant begins to grow too large for the seed shell, and the white stem is pushed out through the hole you notice at one end of the seed. This stem forces its way into the earth below, and puts out a root, and root fingers. And now its upper part begins to lengthen out and to straighten itself. In doing this, it pulls the two seed leaves right out of the seed coat. If it fails at once to get rid of the seed coat, it lifts this up into the air, on top of its leaves.

Often the young maple tree comes into the world in this way, carrying its seed coat on top of its seed leaves. The maple is another plant that packs its baby food within the seed leaves instead of round about them. Perhaps your teacher has saved for you some maple keys (Fig. 93), as the fruit of the maple tree is called. If you split open a maple key, you will find hidden within one of its halves (Fig. 94) the beautiful baby tree. This is folded away so neatly that one is tempted to split open one key after another, for the pleasure of unpacking other delicate baby maples (Fig. 95).

But now let us find out what has happened to the peas which I planted.

Peas seem to us so much like beans, that perhaps you think the young pea baby comes into the world in the same way as the bean plant; but surely we have nothing here that looks at all like the bean plant.

We see some stems having small, thin, green leaves.

Where are the fat seed leaves, filled with the baby food that keeps the plant alive? They are not in sight, certainly, so we must start a hunt for them.

If you will carefully remove the earth from about this little pea plant, you will soon find that the pea seed from which it is growing lies buried in the earth (Fig. 96). This pea seed, like that of the bean, is made up chiefly of what really are two seed leaves, although in the case of the pea it may seem only as a matter of politeness that we give them the name of “leaves;” for in the pea these seed leaves lie buried in the earth, and split open just enough to allow the little pea plant to grow up into the air.

But like the seed leaves of the bean, they are fat and full of food, and care for the young plant just as devotedly as did those of the bean. When this young plant needs them no more, like those of the bean, they die of starvation.

Within the acorn, the seed leaves of the great oak tree grow together. These lie quietly in the acorn shell while sending out supplies of food to the root and stem and leaves of the young oak (Fig. 97). Walnut and chestnut leaves act much in the same manner. But these first leaves of the walnut do not grow together, as you know. Each one is packed away separately in half of the walnut shell.

The corn has but one seed leaf, which makes it unlike all the other plants about which we have been reading; but it resembles the pea, the acorn, the walnut, and the chestnut in this,—that the one seed leaf lies buried in the earth, as do their two seed leaves.

The baby corn plant is very small. It does not fill the whole seed shell, but gets its nourishment from the food by which it is surrounded.

This picture shows you a seed or grain of corn cut in two (Fig. 98). Of course, this is much larger than life. In the center you see the tiny plant. All about is the baby food.

The next picture (Fig. 99) shows you the young corn plant.

I want you to remember that this is the only plant we have seen with but one seed leaf. This one seed leaf never comes out of the seed shell. There are other plants of the same kind. All the grass plants have but one seed leaf, and the blue flag that grows in wet meadows, and all the lilies.

Only a few plants have more than two of these seed leaves. The pine trees are among these few. This picture (Fig. 100) shows you a baby pine tree, still cradled in its seed, surrounded by baby food; and the next one (Fig. 101) shows you the pine just starting out in the world, with its six seed leaves.

When you study the botany that is written for older people, you will find that plants are set apart in separate groups, according to the number of their seed leaves.

Strange though it may seem to you, plants with but one seed leaf have certain habits that you will not find in a plant with two seed leaves; and a plant with two seed leaves, long after these have passed away, will show by root and stem that it had more than one seed leaf.

In your schoolroom garden I should like you to grow side by side, first a plant with but one seed leaf, next a plant with two seed leaves, and lastly a plant with more than two.

SEEDS AS FOOD

I want you to think for yourselves why it is fortunate for us human beings that many plants store away in their seeds so much baby food.

“Because without this the little plants would die, and we should have no new plants to make the world beautiful to live in,” some child replies.

That answer is a good one; but it is not just the answer that I wish.

Can you think of any other way in which we all benefit by the large supply of baby food that is packed away in certain seeds?

If the right answer to this question does not occur to you, try to remember which of those seeds we have been reading about have been supplied with a specially large amount of this food.

You remember that the bean holds so much baby food in its seed leaves, that these are very fat. So do the pea, the walnut, and the chestnut. The seed of corn, also, is well filled with baby food, only in the corn seed it is packed around the outside of the seed leaves, instead of the inside.

But the squash, although it puts in its seed leaves enough food to keep its young plant well and hearty, does not lay by any great quantity of this material. Neither does the maple tree, which also stores the seed leaves with food, but does not fill them nearly so full as do the bean and the pea.

And the morning-glory, which packs its precious white jelly (this is what the little morning-glory plant likes to eat) all about its young, lays up only just enough of this to last until the baby plant breaks out of its seed shell.

Now, what difference do we find between these seeds?—between the seeds of squash, morning-glory, and maple, which have only a small supply of baby food, and those other ones, such as bean and pea and corn and walnut and chestnut, which are packed full of nourishment?

“Why, these last ones are good to eat!” you exclaim. “They are part of the food we live upon, while the squash seeds, the morning-glory seeds, and the maple seeds are not good to eat.”

Yes, that is the answer which I wished. The baby food in these seeds makes “grown-up” food for us. We get strength and nourishment from the same material which the mother plant has prepared for her young.

Now try to name the different seeds which help to make up our food. Already we have mentioned several kinds. Besides these, there is the oat seed (from which comes oatmeal), the wheat seed (from which comes flour for our bread), the coffee seed, the buckwheat seed, the peanut seed, the almond seed, and many others, some of which will come to your mind from time to time.

I wish you would make for your teacher a list of all those that you can recall; or, better still, I should like you to collect as many as you possibly can, and bring them to your next class. If you cannot find the seeds just as they grow upon the plant, you may be able to get them prepared for use. A pinch of flour, for instance, would answer for wheat seeds, of oatmeal for oat seeds.

I have in mind a number of seeds that you can easily secure, of which I have not spoken; and it will be interesting at our next meeting to see which child in this class is able to make the best exhibition of seed food.

AN IMPATIENT PLANT BABY

Plant babies are not alike as to the time they take in finding their way out of the ripe seed shell into the world.

Certain seeds need only two or three days in which to bring forth their young. Perhaps we ourselves have seen the white tip of the bean rip open its shell the second or third day after being laid upon the moist cotton wool. But if we had not given this bean plant a good chance to grow, it would have kept alive and hearty inside its shell for a long time. This is not the case with all plants. Certain seeds need to be planted soon after they are ripe. If they are not, their baby plants die.

But usually seeds take such good care of their young, that they will live for a long time, even if shut up in a dark closet or a table drawer, instead of being comfortably laid away in the warm, moist earth.

Wonderful stories are told of seeds that have sprouted after having lain buried in some Egyptian tomb for thousands of years; but the people best fitted to judge of the truth of such stories do not believe them. There is no doubt, however, that some seeds keep their baby plants alive for many years.

Early in the summer the seeds of the red maple fall to the ground; and soon after this the young plants find their way up into the world above. Later in the year the sugar maple sheds its seeds. These lie sleeping in the earth through the winter. When the warm spring days come, the baby plants awake, and stretch themselves, and join the hundreds of other, just-awakened baby plants that are flocking into the world above. So you see that seeds of the same family have different habits in this matter.

There is one curious tree that lives in swamps along the seashore of hot countries. It is called the mangrove. The baby plants of this tree are so anxious to get out into the world, that they do not wait until the seeds in which they are hidden are set free from the mangrove fruit.

It is as if the little plants inside the apple seed could not wait until the apple flesh should be eaten or should decay, but insisted on struggling first out of the seed into the apple, and then through the apple into the light and air.

This picture (Fig. 102) shows you the mangrove fruit. It looks more like a pear than an apple. In the middle of this lies hidden one seed. As time goes on, this grows bigger and bigger, trying to make room for the impatient little plant within; but it does not grow fast enough to please this ambitious young one, which finally overcomes the difficulty by piercing the seed shell with its stem. This stem bores its way right down through the mangrove fruit, and breaks into the outer air. It keeps on growing in this way for many weeks, till at last it is a foot long (Fig. 103). Try to fancy how odd a mangrove tree must look at this time, covered with mangroves, from each one projecting this long odd-looking beak, which one could hardly guess to be the stem of the baby plant within the fruit.

We read that these long-beaked fruits bob about with every breath of wind in a fashion that gives the tree a still stranger look than on a day when the air is not stirring. Picture a pear tree from every pear of which the long stem of a baby pear tree protrudes. Would you not be eager to find one of these pears and cut it open, and see what sort of a baby plant it must be that could send out such a great stem?

But perhaps the strangest part of the story is yet to come. At last all of these great beaks fall away from the fruit; and from the broken top of each grows a little bud, such as you see in the picture (Fig. 104). When this heavy beak falls upon the muddy ground below, its pointed end strikes first, and so bores into the earth.

Even if it happens to fall into the water, it does this with so much force that it will pierce its way to the depth of eighteen or twenty inches, and yet remain standing erect when it strikes bottom, where it sends out a root. When it has secured a good hold, the little bud unfolds into four leaves. Above these grow larger, shining leaves; and soon the ground beneath an old mangrove tree is covered with these daring little adventurers.

A HUMPBACKED PLANT BABY

Now let us pause for a moment, and try to recall a little of what we have learned since school opened.

We learned that the fruit of a plant is the part which holds its seed, and that there are many different kinds of fruits; that the burr of the burdock, the pod of the milkweed, the puff of the dandelion, are fruits, as well as the apple and the pear, the acorn and the walnut.

We learned that the chief importance of these fruits lies in the fact just mentioned, that they hold the seeds of the plants.

Then we learned something about the many different kinds of seeds, and of how these seeds managed to become separated from the parent plant, and to get a start in life.

Next we read of the baby plant which lies hidden within every perfect seed. We learned how this is kept safe and warm, and supplied with food, and how at last it finds its way out of the seed shell into the world.

If you have been using this book in the right way, not only have you read about these things, but you have seen them with your own eyes.

Some of the fruits you have tasted, and others you have handled.

You have examined the silky sails of the seeds which float through the air, and the hooks and claws of those little tramps that manage to steal free rides.

And some seeds you have planted. These you have watched day by day, and you have seen that the baby plants burst their seed shells much as a chick bursts its eggshell.

Now what I want you to do is this: I want you to study carefully the different parts of these little creatures that are living out their strange, beautiful lives under your very eyes. I want you to watch them from day to day; to learn how they eat and drink and work and grow, until you feel that you know them really well.

First let us look at this bean plant which is breaking its way through the earth.

Just what do you see?

You see what looks like a thick, green hoop (Fig. 105), do you not?

What is it, this odd-looking hoop?

Perhaps some of you still think that it is the root, for I remember that I too once supposed the root was the part of the plant which first left the bean.

But really this green hoop is made by the bent stem. We know that this is the stem because from its lower end grows the root, while from its upper part grow the leaves, flowers, and fruit.

Certainly it is curious, the way in which this bean plant comes into the world. Why does it not grow straight up and down, do you suppose?—up with its stem and leaves, and down with its root?

But we must not forget that whenever some habit on the part of a plant has filled us with surprise, sooner or later we have discovered that the plant’s reason for it was a good one.

What reason can the bean plant have for coming into the world crooked?

Before reading further, try to think this out for yourselves. Try each one of you to form an idea of what the bean plant gains by pushing through the earth with this hooped stem.

I hope some of you may guess correctly. But even if you have not been successful in naming the cause of the bean plant’s humped back, at least you have been working your brains; and every time you do this, you help to keep them in good order.

If you let your brain lie idle, and allow your teacher or your book to do for you not only all the asking of questions, but also all the thinking-out of answers, it will get as dull and rusty and good for nothing as a machine that is laid by for a long time gets dull and rusty and good for nothing.

I should be sorry to think that any of you children were carrying about in your heads any such rusty, good-for-nothing brains. So if you wish to keep them bright and clean, and in good working order, you must try to do your own thinking.

And now, hoping you have tried to guess for yourselves the reason of this crooked back, I will explain it to you.

But first handle carefully the tip of one of the upper leaves on the larger bean plant. You see how delicate this is.

Then feel how firm and hard and tough is the green hoop of the plant which is just breaking through the earth.

Now suppose the bean plant had grown straight up into the air, would not its uppermost part have been the delicate leaf tips?

Can you not see that these would have been too frail to work their way uninjured through the earth?

But by crooking its stout stem the plant opened quite easily a path for itself and for its leaves, and no harm was done anywhere (Figs. 106, 107). Was not this a clever thought? But really every step in the life of the plant is full of interest, if we watch it with sharp eyes and a brain in good order.