Fruit of the earth

“ And in like manner also, with regard to what grew upon the earth, where it is said, “The earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after its kind and after its likeness, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself, after its kind, upon the earth.” ”

“ 29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. ”

“ Of fruit trees the apple, pear, plum, cherry, medlar, pomegranate, fig, quince, as well as two kinds of vine, grow wild; oranges, sweet and bitter, and other Aurantiaceae thrive well in gardens and plantations. ”

“ Indeed, we are at a loss to decide which we value the more, the apple-blossoms or the apples which follow. Nature is not content with bulk, flavor, and nutriment, but in the fruit itself so deftly pleases the eye with every trick of color and form that the hues and beauty of the flower are often surpassed. ”

“ In botany we have no such word as fruit. What you call fruit is in some trees the seed. In all species of nuts, for instance, the fruit and the seed are one and the same thing—that is to say, the kernel of the nut is both fruit and seed. ”

“ The fruit has grown heavy; it drops and falls to the ground,—it dies; but the seed still lives,—and therein lies the germ of a ‘possibility’ of some future plant, with its luxuriant foliage and its fruit. ”

“ And there grow tall trees blossoming, pear-trees and pomegranates, and apple-trees with bright fruit, and sweet figs, and olives in their bloom. The fruit of these trees never perisheth, neither faileth, winter nor summer, enduring through all the year. Evermore the West Wind blowing brings some fruits to birth and ripens others. ”

“ The husk breaks, the seed falls in the soil, it rains and the rain fertilises the seed, the sun shines and makes it grow, and when the tree has grown and again bears blossoms and fruit, this fruit is useful to man, is food and not poison to him. ”

“ Every species of vegetable grew here in finest luxuriance. Melons of every variety, pine-apples, sweet potatoes, plantains, and bananas, with their broad and drooping leaves of freshest green and rich purple flower, and ripe yellow fruit. Orange-trees, cocoa-nut trees, limes—the fig, the vine, the citron, the pomegranate, and numerous others, grateful to the weary sight, and bearing precious stores amid their branches, combined to give the appearance of wealth and plenty to this happy valley. ”

“ From low, broad spreading trees depended the grape fruit, as large as an infant's head and yellow as gold, while the orange, lime and lemon trees, bearing blossoms, green and ripe fruit all together, met the eye at every turn, and filled the garden with fragrance. ”

“ Not only may we pluck a single blossom, and here and there a single half-ripened fruit from this tree; but the ripest, the best, that which has hung the longest in the sun-light, that whose cheeks are painted the most rosy red, and whose heart has in it the most saccharine juice, that is ready to-day to fall into our open palm if we will but extend it. ”

“ On taking up the fruit-trees, the roots should be preserved of a convenient length, in consequence of which they will incline to grow in a horizontal direction, and be more immediately influenced by the sun: their sap will become richer, and produce the sweetest and most beautiful fruit. ”

“ Ere the dinner bell rang I found a new wonderland of beauty reaching away beyond me. To watch from early spring till winter's icy breath destroyed them, these multiplied varieties of vegetable life gradually passing through all their beautiful changes of bud and blossom, and ripened seed or fruit would be a training in some respects, equalling that of the schools. What higher lessons in botany I might take, day by day exploring the secrets of plant life! ”

“ What will you say if it turns out that the roses have improved in their roots but not in the bloom, and the potatoes in the bloom but not in their tubers; that the strawberries have remarkably fine leaves but very small fruit; that the peas and the cabbages have indeed enormous stems, while the seed of the one and the leaf of the other are insignificant in size and tasteless to the palate? ”

“ No Plant is ever seen here without either Leaf, Blossom, or Fruit, except the European Apple-Tree, which never changes its nature, but blossoms and bears Fruit at the same time of the year as in Europe. ”

“ The neat orchards of to-day, with their long perspectives, and with bush-fruit planted in between the lines of plum and apple-trees, to economise every inch of this wonderful soil, would seem to him even more of an Eden, neater and more extended than in his day. It is not, you will say, the most picturesque form of cultivation, but it has that best of picturesque beauty to some minds, the picturesqueness of profit. ”

“ Where are the harvests garnered which grew in the soil of the human heart? What thoughts and generous purposes have been ripened and stored up like fruit, and what ones have fallen and perished like leaves? ”

“ Disregarding what we call fruits and looking at it from the plant’s point of view, a fruit is anything in which, or upon which, a seed is developed or ripened quite without regard as to whether it is edible by man or not. ”

“ But instead of those you have offered them sour, unripe fruit, with a glittering rind-from your own garden, of your own growing. The fruit of trees is a gift from Nature, and all that she brings forth has some good in it; but what you offer to the world is hollow and poisonous. ”

“ I find it convenient in this volume, and wish I had thought of the expedient before, whenever I get into a difficulty, to leave the reader to work it out. He will perhaps, therefore, be so good as to define fruit for himself. Having defined it, he will find that the sentence about which I was alarmed above is, in the main, true, and that tented plants principally are herb yielding seed, while building plants give fruit. The berried shrubs of rock and wood, however dwarfed in stature, are true builders. The strawberry-plant is the only important exception—a tender Bedouin. ”

“ The natural color of fruit is developed by growth in air and sunshine. We are content with the ruddy glow of the apple, the blush of the peach and the rich scarlet of the strawberry, and ask no artificial coloring to improve them. ”

“ Still that internal heat comes originally out of the sunshine. Just before the time when man was placed upon the earth, the beautiful family of plants was created, which fills the gardens with roses, and which yields the apple, the pear, the cherry, the plum, the apricot, the peach, the almond, the strawberry, and the raspberry. Just at the very time was planted on the globe, the vegetable tribe which furnishes the different kinds of nourishing grain, and which provides pasture for grazing animals. ”

“ Fig. 796.—Three-celled capsule.
Fruit, in botany, is by no means limited to the juicy products of trees or plants which are so refreshing in the summer weather, and so acceptable in any form. In plant life the herb yielding seed produces a fruit equally with the orange or the apple. The fruit is the outcome of the varied processes of the plant. We may trace the plant from its tiny, sometimes very minute seed, through stem to flower and seed again. ”

“ When I go by this shrub thus late and hardy, and see its dangling fruit, I respect the tree, and I am grateful for Nature’s bounty, even though I cannot eat it. Here on this rugged and woody hill-side has grown an apple-tree, not planted by man, no relic of a former orchard, but a natural growth, like the pines and oaks. Most fruits which we prize and use depend entirely on our care. Corn and grain, potatoes, peaches, melons, etc., depend altogether on our planting; but the apple emulates man’s independence and enterprise. ”

“ But fruit also literal: for what joy of vegetation is lacking to the man who every month in the year can look through his study-window on a green lawn, and have strawberries and cream for his breakfast,—who can sit down to this royal fruit, and at the same time to apricots, peaches, nectarines, blackberries, raspberries, melons, figs both yellow and purple, early apples, and grapes of three kinds? ”

“ But when the fruit of every plant is maturing, it draws to itself a large part of the prepared sap, which, when it has entered the kernel, is still farther elaborated, and made to produce the peculiar qualities of the fruit, whether corn or wheat, apple or pear. It is plain from this explanation that a plant stripped of its leaves is like a chemist robbed of his laboratory, or like a man without lungs. ”

“ They send their roots down into the same soil; their fibres become interlaced in it; and yet each tree has the mysterious power to draw from the same soil the substances which produce its own peculiar fruit. So it is throughout the vegetable kingdom. ”

“ This pleasing volume, after stating the excellency of fruits, observes, "if fruit trees had no other advantage attending them than to look upon them, how pleasurable would that be? Since there is no flowering shrub excels, if equals that of a peach, or apple tree in bloom. The tender enamelled blossoms, verdant foliage, with such a glorious embroidery of festoons and fruitages, wafting their odours on every blast of wind, and at last bowing down their laden branches, ready to yield their pregnant offspring into the hands of their laborious planter and owner." ”

“ The trees are all hardy enough to succeed in any common soil of our gardens, in almost any situation and exposure; and in favourable springs, when their early blossom is not destroyed by frost, they generally produce abundant crops of fruit. ”

“ In other words—trench, manure, hoe and water around your young tree, and patiently allow the young fruit to develop of its own juice from the root; your own task being, as the fruit forms, but to bring in all you can of air and sunshine upon it. It must, as every mother and nurse knows, be coaxed to realise itself, to develop, to grow from its individual root. ”

“ Fruit trees retain their own particular quality if permitted to grow undisturbed, but lose it promptly and bear strange fruit not their own when ingrafted. Every herb has its peculiar characteristics, its virtues and properties ”

“ Orchard fruits are conveniently divided into large and small fruits, the large fruits being represented by the apple, pear, peach, quince, etc., and the small fruit by the cherry and plum. Fruits were doubtless among the earliest foods of man, and this leads to another classification of fruits, namely, wild and cultivated. ”

“ The fruit guards the seed until it is mature, then the fruit goes to decay that the seed may be released; the seed gives up its life that a new tree may come. What a glorious parable is this: life for life, the old dying for the new; every tree in the orchard, every grain-stalk in the corn-field, every dusty weed by the roadside living for others and ready to die for others. The doctrine of unselfish love and of sacrifice comes to us fragrant with the odor of ten thousand blossoms and rich with the yellow fruitage of ten thousand harvests. ”

“ That it hath not only some good in it, but also perfections; hence flowers and leaves are not wont to be called fruits, although they come from the same seed that the fruits do, and be the last two that comes forth, and hath in it that perfection, that it is the end both of the seed, and all other things that arise from the seed before the fruit. ”

“ One unreal difficulty, or shadow of difficulty, remains in our having no entirely comprehensive [234] name for seed and seed-vessel together than that the botanists now use, 'fruit.' But practically, even now, people feel that they can't gather figs of thistles, and never speak of the fructification of a thistle, or of the fruit of a dandelion. ”

“ The apple tree was made from this juice which we call sap. This sap is the blood of the plant. It makes the plant grow just as your blood makes you grow.
The sap came to the little apple plant all the time it was growing. But where did the plant get the sap?
The food of a plant lies all about its roots. The rain, or water from your watering pot, falls around the plant. It sinks into the ground. Then the water dissolves the earth just as it dissolves sugar. ”

“ Still more striking is the illustration of a stately bread-fruit tree, fair to look upon, with large glossy leaves and abundant fruit,—a tree which in the natural course of healthy life will, when full grown, send up from its roots strong shoots, which yield their first crop in the second or third year, so that ere long the patriarchal tree is the centre of a leafy fruit-bearing grove. ”

“ Fruit is of the greatest use to man; and fruit-trees should be planted in large numbers, particularly the orange and the lime. When their fruit has formed and ripened, it is not inferior in beauty to flowers. ”

“ The people knew of other plants that were useful for food, and the season for their ripening, and, believing that the fruit of this strange plant would ripen in its proper time, they arranged to guard and protect it carefully, awaiting with patience the time of its ripening and further revelation of its purpose. ”

“ Allow me to remind you that very much fruit is never picked; some gets nipped in the blossom; some gets worm-eaten and falls to the ground; some rots on the trees before it ripens; some, too slow in ripening, gets bitten by the early frosts of autumn; while some rich, rare, ripe apples hang unpicked, frozen and worthless on the leafless trees of winter! ”

“ Our fruit-Trees prosper abundantly, Apple-trees, Pear-trees, Quince-trees, Cherry-trees, Plum-trees, Barberry-trees. I have observed with admiration, that the Kernels sown or the Succors planted produce as fair & good fruit, without graffing, as the Tree from whence they were taken: the Countrey is replenished with fair and large Orchards. ”

“ At this moment they are plants, appearing just above the ground; all equally fair and flourishing. Within a short time, however, some begin to rise above others; indicating by a more rapid growth a structure of superior vigor, and promising both more early and more abundant fruit.... ”