W. J. Beal

“ Then a breeze tears off a few pods and they fall on the snow, which has filled up all the crevices in the grass and between the dead leaves and rubbish. Each half-pod, freighted with every other seed, is admirably constructed; like an ice boat, it has a sail always spread to the breeze. In this way there is often nothing to hinder some of the seeds from going a mile or two in a few minutes, now and then striking some object which jars off a seed or two. The seeds are very hard, and no doubt purposely so, that they may not be eaten by insects or birds ”

“ Do you know how nature plants them? A seed starts and becomes a small plant on the surface of the leaf mould or a little beneath; little roots push downward and to right and left; and later, after getting a good hold below with numerous branchlets, the slender roots shorten and tug away at the tiny bulb above, as much as to say, "Come down a little into mother earth, for cold winter is approaching and there will be danger from frost." The young bulb is drawn down an inch more or less, the slender roots perish with the growing year, but the bulb is preserved. ”

“ In the driftwood, which we still have under consideration, are some fruits of maple, beech, oak, tulip tree, locust, and basswood. Maples are well scattered by the wind, but these seed-like fruits have taken to the water, and a few still retain vitality. An acorn, while yet alive, sinks readily, and is not suited for water navigation, unless by accident it rides on some driftwood. The fruits of the tulip tree, locust, and basswood behave well on the water, as though designed for the purpose, though we naturally, and with good reason, class them with plants usually distributed by wind. ”

“ Why is a boy or man of light weight chosen to ride the horse on the race track? That the animal may have less weight to carry and thereby use his surplus strength in making better time. The less weight the parachute of the seed of the willow-herb has to carry, the greater the chances for success in making a long journey. Of the willow-herb it takes one hundred seeds to weigh a milligram, including the hairs attached to them, and it would take thirty thousand to weigh as much as an ordinary white bean. ”

“ Sweet vernal grass, tall oat grass, holy grass, redtop, animated or wild oats, blue-joint, and porcupine grass are among them. When mature, the grain and glumes drop off, or are pushed off, and go to the ground. When moist, these awns untwist and straighten out, but when dry they coil up again; with each change they seem to crawl about on the ground and work down to low places or get into all sorts of cracks and crevices, where the first rain is likely to cover them more or less with earth, after which they are ready for growth. ”

“ Each struggles for possession and does the best it can, and to some extent one supplements the other, with the result that at all times from spring to fall there is a close mat of living green which delights the eye and is pleasant to the feet that tread upon it. In soft ground, with plenty of room, a bit of quick or quack grass, or Bermuda, will extend in a year three to five feet or more in one direction. ”

“ For several days the flowers of a head blossom in succession, each night to be snugly wrapped by the scales, and the next day to be again left open, if the weather be fine. After each flower in turn has been allowed to see the light, and after all have been crawled over by bee and wasp to distribute the yellow pollen that seeds may be produced, there is nothing else to do but patiently wait for a week or two while receiving food from the mother plant to perfect each little fruit and seed. During all this period of maturing, day and night, rain or shine, the scales hold the cluster closely ”

“ There can be no doubt that young oak trees slowly move in this manner from one place to another. If in fifty years we have two distinct grubs or branches, three or four feet apart, where the connecting part has finally died out, I see no reason why in another fifty years each one of the two may not again have spread and divided, giving us at least four grubs, or clusters of sprouts, all originally coming from one acorn; and so the matter might go on. This is slow traveling, I admit, but there is nothing to hinder nature from taking all the time she wants. ”

“ The berry is as large as one's thumb, and when ripe, bursts open irregularly on the upper side as it hangs up under the calyx. As the covering of the pod opens more and more, a few seeds at a time may be rattled out by wind or animal. The numerous large and light fruits, with calyx surrounding them, are each supported on a nodding stem, stiff and elastic, which gives the wind a good chance to sway them about. Water does not seem to get into the berries even when they are torn open, for when it is poured over the branches it rolls off the calyx roof as freely as from a duck's back. ”

“ In 1888 I made a study of this tree as it lives on the sandy plains of Michigan. The tree is often killed by fire, and never sprouts from the stump, as do oaks, willows, cherries, and most other trees. The jack-pine grows readily and rapidly from seed dropped on the sand, and begins to bear cones and seeds in abundance while it is yet only a few years old, perhaps as young as five years in some instances. The cones open slowly to liberate their seeds, some of them only after months or even years, and in some cases they never open at all. ”

“ The stout pods grow and ripen in a highly strained condition, with a strong tendency to burst spirally, the two half-pods being ready to coil and spring in opposite directions; when the valves can no longer hold together, they snap with a sharp noise and sling the heavy seeds, giving them a good send-off into the world. As a pair of birds build a nest, hatch eggs, rear their young, and then send them forth to seek their fortunes, so for months the mother plant had labored, had produced and matured seeds, which at last it scattered broadcast. ”

“ When food becomes scarce, squirrels quickly shift to new regions. Coons, bears, skunks, and porcupines move from one neighborhood to another. When the thickets disappear and hunters abound, wild turkeys and partridges retreat on foot or by wing. When the leaves fall and the cold winds blow, wild geese leave the lakes in secluded northern homes, and with their families, reared during the summer, go south to spend the winter. Turtles swim from pond to pond or crawl from the water to the sand bank, where they lay and cover their eggs. ”

“ The cluster of nuts and the bract hang down, dangling about with the least breath of wind, and rattling on the trees because the enlarged base of the stem has all broken loose excepting two slender, woody threads, which still hold fast. These threads are of different degrees of strength; some break loose after a few hard gales, while others are strong enough to endure many gales, and thus they break off a few at a time. The distance to which the fruit can be carried depends on the form of the bract, the velocity of the wind, and the smoothness of the surface on which the fruit falls. ”

“ The small flowers are borne on a long, elastic, and rather stiff stem, and each flower stalk has a joint just at the base. As this fruit matures, the joint becomes very easy to separate. It dries with a tension, so that, if touched, the fruit goes with a snap and a bound for several feet. The shaking produced by the wind jostling several against each other is sufficient to send off a number of ripe fruits in every direction. Like many other plants we have seen, this has more than one way of scattering seeds, and often more than two ways. ”

“ Within are a few seeds, hard and smooth. Why are they so hard? Will it not be difficult for such seeds to get moist enough and soft enough to enable them to germinate? The hard coats enable the seeds to remain uninjured for a long time in the water, in case one or two cells of the papery pods are broken open; and after the tough pod has decayed and the seeds have sunken to the moist earth among the sticks and dead leaves, they can have all the time they need for the slow decay of their armor. Sooner or later a tiny plant is likely to appear and produce a beautiful bush. ”

“ Let a person or some animal pass into a patch of these plants, and at once numerous fruits catch on wherever there is a chance, and some are shot upon or into the fleeces of animals, there to find free transportation for uncertain distances. Should there be a freshet, some of these fruits will float; or, in case of shallow currents after a rain, some of them are washed away from the parent plant. Any inquisitive person cannot fail to be pleased if he experiment with the plant when the fruit is ripe. ”

“ Many of the dry nuts hang on all winter, or for a part of it, rattling in the wind, as though loath to leave. Some of them are torn loose, and in winter there will be a better chance than at any other time for the wind to do the seeds a favor, especially when there is snow on the ground, for then they will bound along before the breeze till something interrupts them. ”

“ I have seen cones containing good seeds that had been nearly grown over by the tree. Dry weather, the dryer and hotter the better, causes many of these stubborn old cones to open their scales and allow the seeds to escape. What can be the advantage in cones of this nature? Let us see. A brisk fire passes over the ground at irregular intervals, usually of from one to ten years; it licks up all dry leaves and sticks, and kills the pine trees and all else above ground. The soil and the trunks of trees are blackened, and by lack of reflection the heat of the sun is rendered more intense ”

“ Why some seeds are sticky.—Some seeds and fruits are sticky; in some instances the mucilaginous substance is normally moist enough to adhere to anything that touches it, while in other cases it requires to be wetted before it will adhere. The seeds of flax, plantain, peppergrass, basil, sage, dracocephalum, groundsel, drop-seed grass, and many others less familiar, possess this peculiarity. The berries of some plants, when fully ripe, burst very easily when touched, and some of the seeds are then likely to adhere to animals and be carried away. ”

“ As the seeds are not all carried away the first or even the second time, and as succeeding breezes may come from different directions, it is thus possible for the lily to scatter its seeds in all directions.
The seeds of the lily are flat, very thin, and rather light, not designed to be shot out like bullets, but to be carried a little way by the wind; the pods are erect, and open at the top, that the seeds need not escape when there is no wind or unless some animal gives the stem a strong shake. ”

“ Let me tell you one thing that I discovered the white oaks were doing in the sand of the Jack-pine plains of Michigan. In dry weather the dead grass, sticks, and logs are often burned, which kills much or all that is growing above ground. In this way little maples, ashes, witch-hazels, willows, huckleberries, blackberries, sweet ferns, service berries, aspens, oaks, and others are often killed back, but afterward sprout up again and again, and, after repeated burnings, form each a large rough mass popularly known as a grub. ”

“ In throwing some of these from a third-story window, it was found that a bract with no fruit attached would reach the ground sooner than a bract that bore from two to four solid nuts. The empty or unloaded bracts tumble and slide through the air endwise, with nothing to balance them or steady their descent, while the fruit on other bracts holds them with one side to the air, which prolongs their descent. The less a loaded bract whirls, the faster its descent, and the more a bract whirls when the wind blows, the farther it is carried. ”

“ We must not overlook the fact, so well established, that one of the greatest points to be gained by plant migration is to enable different stocks of a species to be cross fertilized, and thereby improved in vigor and productiveness. ”