Margaret Warner Morley

“ Only in the hyacinth bed it is different, for there the hyacinths have waked up; their stiff leaves have opened the door of the earth for the blossoms to come out. The flower clusters are nearly ready to bloom, but the buds are still green. The tall stem has lifted them up into the air and sunlight, and, although the air is still cold, they continue to grow. ”

“ As the protoplasm withdraws from the leaves of the rose bushes and of many other plants, particularly the trees, the resting time of the plant is announced by the most brilliant colors, the result of certain changes going on within the leaf. These bright colors that make our autumn woods so entrancing are not dependent upon the frost, as many think, but upon certain changes going on within the leaf itself as it ripens, just as fruit, when it ripens, takes on glowing colors. The bright autumn leaves are ripe leaves getting ready to fall. ”

“ Early in the spring the snowdrops and crocuses peep out, and then they go away.
We do not think much about it, for other flowers have come in their places.
Spring beauties and bloodroots shine in the woods, and then they go away. But the mandrakes have come with their umbrella leaves, and then the columbines and roses ask for a welcome.
After awhile we can find no more mandrakes and columbines, only yellow apples and brown seed-pods. ”

“ After they get two or three tiny green leaves and the cunningest little curled-up frond, just like a big fern, off they tumble down to the ground, where they strike root and grow as calmly as though they had come the regular plant way and sprouted from a seed. ”

“ The gases and the minerals are not lost. They join some other plant and help to make it strong.
“It is better to help another than to try to grow yourselves,” Mother Nature whispers to these little seeds that could not sprout. And they are happy. They are glad to change into gases and minerals and help another plant to grow.
Many of the seeds sprout, but not all grow up and blossom. There is not room in the earth for all the seeds to grow; there is not food enough in the air to feed so many. Mother Nature with her kind eye looks over the growing plants. ”

“ Plants are not the only things that have cells. Animals, too, are built up of them. Animal cells are usually softer than plant cells, because they very often have no hard walls. Bone cells of course have hard walls, and there are others, but most of the animal cells are without walls.
So you see all living things are built of cells, and the living part of the cells is the protoplasm.
You yourself are built up of millions of cells, and without the help of protoplasm you would not be living, for protoplasm made your cells, and protoplasm is the only thing in you that is alive. ”

“ It is spring, and the air is moist and warm. It rains often, and the plants have all the water they need.
What fun it must be to come out in the world! What joy to unfold bright flowers in the shadowy woods! ”

“ The great winds sweep about the earth, bearing the oxygen from the forests to the crowded cities, and sweeping away the carbon dioxide from the cities to the fields and woods. The winds, too, stir up the water where the water plants and fishes live, and help keep it full of air for the things in it to breathe ”

“ But there will be more morning-glories, for the vine has stored some of its life in the seeds, and they will not fade and cease to work. All that is left of the life of the vine is in the seeds. All the morning-glories that will grow and delight us with their bright flowers next summer lie packed away in the dark seeds. ”

“ As soon as the pollen is gone the anther lies down again out of the way.
The stamens do not crowd the doorway of the spur; they lie down out of the way until they ripen, then they stand in front of the spur, and when their pollen is shed they lie down again.
They do not obstruct the way to the nectary because they wish the bees and birds to find an easy entrance.
Why does one anther ripen at a time? Why do not all shed pollen together, as is the habit of the morning-glory, and finish in one day?
Perhaps the tropæolum fears the rain may ruin the chances of the seeds to get pollen. ”

“ If you happen to be a large insect with a long tongue, you will be sure to find a welcome in many a flower with a tube. And no doubt, if you are fond of honey and are industrious about collecting it, you will find that the flower whose nectar you like the very best and which you visit the oftenest has a tube just the same shape and size as your tongue ”

“ This fight of the plants for a place to grow in is called the struggle for existence. Now, whatever would help a plant in the struggle for existence would, of course, be of great benefit to that plant. ”

“ They dance on their stems and ripen their seeds; before the slow roses have thought of opening their eyes, the bulb people and the underground-stem people have done all their work of growing. The seeds are ripe and ready to be scattered; new bulbs are packed full of plant food, and fresh food is stored in the thick underground stems. The bulb people and the underground-stem people have had a good time. ”

“ You will be glad to know that the little ovules at the heart of the morning-glory and of all other flowers are single cells.
They have an outside wall and are filled with protoplasm.
When a pollen cell is formed from the inside of the anther, it separates and is no longer connected with anything. This is not the case with the ovule. It is fastened to the ovary by a little stem, for it will stay there and grow; and it must have a way to get food from its parent plant. It gets the food through this little stem. ”

“ Like a good many other interesting things, protoplasm cannot usually be seen by the naked eye; it is in such small quantities that it takes a microscope to find it. And when you have found it, so far as its looks are concerned, it would hardly seem to pay for the trouble, for to the eye it is nothing but a colorless, jelly-like substance. It looks more like the white of an egg than anything else. But remember it is not safe to judge protoplasm or people by looks alone. ”

“ We are glad our morning-glory kept this little notch and the line where the sides of the petals grew together, for that is what tells us the story of long, long ago when all the petals were separate.
When finally they were grown together, the corolla did not need to be so stiff, for its shape helped to make it firm, and then it no longer used good material to make stiffening for the petals, for that would have been a waste of plant sap, and plants do not like to waste materials. When they find they can get along without something they have been used to having, they stop making it. ”

“ When the pollen is in, the little hole closes, and the ovules feel strong and alive. They draw in the sap the leaves have made them through their little stem; they grow larger and firmer. They cease to be tiny white round things; they get two leaves with a little stem and a bud between them.
They are no longer ovules, they are seeds. They are little sleeping vines. In each black little seed is a whole vine packed away.
After a time the old vine will fade away. It will fall and turn brown. It will do no more work of changing gases and minerals into living plant. ”

“ When Mother Nature combines her carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, magnesia, iron, and all the other things to make a plant, she does not go to work as she would if she were going to make an animal. ”

“ You see, the insects in visiting the flowers would irritate them more or less walking over them and clinging to them, and they would be likely to undergo change for this reason; and if it happened that in some flower a row of stamens got too full of sap to know what to do with themselves and so spread out a little broader and more leaf-like and kept their yellow stamen color or bleached-out white, that flower would be seen far and near and the insects would go straight to it, for insects have the sharpest kind of eyes for seeing bright colors a long way off. ”

“ You see, in the tropæolum the shields are the leaves, and they are held out on long stems to catch the darts Apollo, the sun, flings at them. These are not unfriendly darts, but as they 59strike the little shields of the tropæolum they make them tingle with life. Then the shield leaves go to work and make food for the plant. They make starch and many other things. They make a spicy juice, for one thing, that causes our tongues to smart if we taste it. Sometimes we bite a tropæolum stem, for we like the taste of the sharp juice. ”

“ Oil is another common substance in plants, and it is made from the materials of starch which, as we know, are carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; cotton-seed oil, olive oil, and castor oil we are all familiar with.
All nuts contain a great deal of oil, and the skin of a fresh-picked orange is so full of it that it runs down our fingers when we cut the orange.
All the things in a plant—starch, sugar, oils, spices, wood, bark—everything is made by the wonderful protoplasm in the cells. ”

“ The amœba can do more than travel. If you touch one it will shrink together, showing that this little bit of protoplasm has a sort of feeling power.
When it is hungry it eats. For an amœba can get as hungry as anybody.
Hunger does not depend upon size. You can get as hungry as an elephant, although you cannot eat as much. You would starve to death, too, as soon as an elephant, perhaps sooner. An amœba no doubt gets as hungry as you do, and it certainly would starve to death if it did not have something to eat. ”

“ Whether our tropæolum had either of these in mind, it certainly made a very dainty cornucopia when it constructed its honey-horn and filled it for the bees, the butterflies, and the humming birds.
The tropæolums we have in our gardens are not the only kinds; there are, in fact, some forty different tropolæums living in South America and Mexico, and in Peru there is one which has large tuberous roots filled with plant food, which is also good food for man, and is eaten in some parts of South America instead of potatoes! ”

“ Its leaves, as you can see, are more or less like morning-glory and bindweed leaves. Its flowers are also like morning-glories, though they are not so pretty. It has a habit of storing up quantities of starch and sugar in its roots. It does this, hoping to use the starch and sugar again as food in forming new shoots. But sometimes we step in and disarrange all these fine plans, for we, too, need starch and sugar as food, and we take the big sweet roots and eat them.
People plant large fields of sweet potatoes, particularly in the South. ”

“ Meantime the ovule has increased in size as well as complexity, and its cells do several different kinds of work. In the morning-glory, for instance, some build a hard outer wall about the young plant; this is the seed-case. Other cells form two little leaves; others make a little stub of a stem. So the change goes on until the single-celled ovule becomes a many-celled seed with a young plant rolled up under its walls. If you open a morning-glory seed you can see this little baby plant, only you will have to soak the seed first to soften the food that is stored about the young plant. ”

“ They are just swollen portions of underground stems. When you eat your next potato remember it is a tuber, and that a tuber is merely a short piece of stem very much thickened. If you cannot believe this, look a potato in the eyes. There you will see the truth, for the eyes are merely the joints of the stem, and at each is a little bud that in the spring will start to grow, just like the buds on the branches of a tree. The bud grows at the expense of the 102material in the tuber, and the hyacinth grows at the expense of the food stored in the bulb. ”

“ It passes into the lung cells and from them into the blood, and is carried by it all over our bodies to all the millions of cells.
We need a great deal of oxygen, and if the supply should be cut short we would die.
All animals need oxygen; even the worms in the ground and the fishes and oysters in the water must have it. So great quantities are being used up all the time.
Now, you know, when the plants pull carbon dioxide to pieces, they keep the carbon and return the oxygen to the air. In this way we get it to breathe. ”

“ Starch and the food taken up by the roots pass through all parts of the plant by the sap tubes, and as the sap goes along, each living cell draws into itself the substances from the sap that it needs, and these it combines into the things it wants to make. Some of the cells in an orange skin, for instance, attract out of the sap the materials to make the fragrant, stinging oil that fills the fresh skin, while other cells attract the materials to build the white cottony covering 180inside the outer skin, and so the cells in each part of the plant take out what they need to build with. ”

“ The ovule, too, is a cell filled with protoplasm, and the protoplasm of the pollen and of the ovule must 123somehow come together before the ovule can do any more growing.
You know how the bees and butterflies and all sorts of insects carry the pollen from flower to flower and dust the stigmas with it. You may think that when a pollen grain is safely landed on a stigma then the rest is easy enough. But if you suppose the pollen grain can pass through the style you are very much mistaken. It cannot even pass through the stigma. ”