P. Schuyler Miller

“ I have brought stranger-young to a bearing female and placed them among her brood, and they become like her. These—", he touched the tiny plants in his pockets tenderly—"these are orphans which no other plant would adopt. I have had to do so myself."
My head went around like a teetotum. The whole thing was a nightmare! Certainly I had never suspected what would follow my innocent gift of the beautiful flowers which had attracted me so in Madagascar. No wonder the town thought him mad!
We went back through the long greenhouse, and again I saw stems and blossoms twist and sway to greet him. ”

“ He made his way between the beds of oblivious lovers. They were too intent on the business of life to sense that he was there. He opened still another door.
I heard the rustle of leaves as we stepped inside. It was hostile—alarmed—like the buzz of a rattler's tail among dead leaves. He lit the lamp, and I saw that every flower-face in the place was turned toward us. I saw more: their leaves were hugged up like shielding arms, wrapped around their stalks just below the great blooms. There was something alive under those clinging leaves—something small that moved. ”

“ A man wholly wrapped up in his science, lonely and misunderstood, suddenly confronted by these exotic, almost animal blossoms: no wonder his curiosity and imagination had been aroused—no wonder solicitude had become something like affection. ”

“ The female of the species is quite essential to the normal upbringing of the young. It is not so much a question of nourishment, especially after the young plants have fallen off and taken root, but there is a strong—rapport, your French friends would say—between the parent plant and her offspring. Affection, almost. I am convinced that she teaches them the things that they must know to live in the environment in which they find themselves. ”

“ I saw Zulu roses that were like thistles, and others that were like sunflowers. I saw them growing like water-lilies, like cactus, and like edelweiss. They weren't common, but wherever they were they seemed to be perfectly adapted to the environment they were in. Their perfume was really overpowering and not entirely pleasant, and I noted in passing that there were never any bees or other insects near them. ”

“ The old plant was left, and I have always had to give credit to Abigail, much as I sometimes dislike her, because she let him keep it after they were married, up to the point where it began to shed on her rugs. No woman could do more. He killed it then, quietly. And to this day, though Melchizedek Hobbs still potters around the greenhouses and sits in the back of the new store when Abigail will let him, he has never so much as mentioned the Zulu rose nor his ill-fated attempt to teach young plants the facts of life. ”

“ To the waist it was literally patched with little pockets, and every pocket was stuffed with rich black dirt out of which rose the leaves and stems of seedling plants in various stages of maturity. Some were no more than green buttons and some were well leafed out. Some were flourishing vines, that wound affectionately around his arms and his scrawny neck, and thrust tender tendrils down inside his celluloid collar. ”

“ The ability to profit by past experience and to use this knowledge as a guide to future action may, ladies and gentlemen, be taken as the primary differentiation between the animal and the vegetable kingdoms. ”

“ It had an already weather-beaten sign over the door—"HOBBS—FLORIST"—and busy about the front of the shop was a familiar figure in the normal costume of a respectable upstate female.
Jim cast a glance over his shoulder at my question. "Her? That's Abigail Jones; tends for old Hobbs." He spat accurately at the iron hitching post in front of the First National Bank.
Now I know Jim Selford. The boys I cronied with had spent a good deal of their time around his livery stable, and our own yard had backed up on his. ”

“ They are grown in the outer beds, which you have just seen, and brought here when the female begins to mature. The—ah—pollination takes place, as you see, with much demonstrative display on the part of both sexes. I find it closely akin to the nuptial display of certain pheasants, although there are other aspects—but no more of that. The plants are long-lived, and they will enjoy a—ah—happy wedded life for some weeks, until the young plants begin to bud. Then the male is ignored, his—ah—wooing reflexes degenerate, and he withers away within a night. ”

“ That affection, in Nature, assured the species of continued life. It was a blind mechanism, designed by evolution to defy drought and disease and famine. Nature has implanted it very strongly in most animals, but rarely in plants. The female plants looked on him as a mate ”

“ Lacking the male element, it was necessary for me to devise some mixture of chemicals which would serve as a substitute. Needless to say, I was successful, and these lovely creatures are the result.
"The methods of insemination which I was forced to employ were drastic in the extreme, I am afraid, but it will never again be necessary to make use of them. We have a fine new generation of young plants growing up and maturing, ready to mate and bring forth their own kind as you have seen. Many of the parent plants, alas, failed to survive. ”