Part 4

In this way the geranium seeds are sometimes carried long distances. But this is not the end of the story. At last the seed with its coverings and feather rests on the ground. The seed end is towards the ground, and the very tip of the pod is provided with a few short, stiff hairs, that point backwards like the barbs on a fish hook or a bee sting.

Now what do you suppose these hairs are for? Do you think their being there is a mere accident? Not at all. When the weather is damp, the style, with the feather attached, curls up. Then it acts like a gimlet and forces the pointed end of the seed into the ground. When it becomes dry, the style straightens out. But the seed cannot be pulled out of the ground when this happens, because the barbs on the tip of the seed-case hold it fast! So it does time and again. When it is damp, the seed is forced deeper into the earth. When it is dry, the style straightens out so as to be ready to curl up again.

You see how it is, do you not? The pelargonium is _planting its seed_.

Certainly the geraniums are good parents. All the members of this astonishing family do something clever for the sake of the seeds.

AN AFRICAN.

There’s a native of Cape Town Always wears a scarlet crown. Not a lord of high degree, But a simple peasant he.

You will see him, if you look, Resting in some sunny nook. He’s no Boer nor Englishman, But a native African!

He just wanders up and down O’er the wilds of hot Cape Town; Takes no part in strife or war,— Doesn’t know what it is for.

Boers may fight if they must needs. Calm he sits among the weeds. No soldier he in battle’s hum, But just a red geranium!

PELARGONIUM LEAVES.

Some of the pelargoniums decorate their leaves with horseshoes. All are in the habit of folding their leaves fan-like in the bud. When they grow large these folds straighten out. It is a good thing to be folded up fan-like in the bud; the leaf then takes up less room, and is kept snug and safe until it grows strong enough to care for itself. The pelargonium indulges in large stipules. These are green, leaf-like bodies growing on the leaf stalk where it is attached to the stem of the plant. They fold over the young leaf and protect it; but after the leaf comes out of the motherly arms of the stipules and stands up on a long stem, the work of the stipules is done, and gradually they fade and wither away.

Most pelargonium leaves are covered with a fine coat of hairs. In the warm countries where pelargoniums grow wild they need a coat of down to prevent the sun from scorching them.

As long as there is plenty of water in the leaves the sun cannot harm them, no matter how warmly it shines; but if it can draw out the water, then the leaf must fade. The coat of hairs for one thing prevents the water from evaporating too rapidly. Thus the pelargonium does not wear its fuzzy coat to protect it from the cold, but from the sun. The hairs also prevent the rain or dew from stopping up the breathing pores of the leaf.

Most pelargonium leaves have a habit of using perfumery of one kind or another. They make it themselves out of the food they find in the earth and the air. The rose geraniums we think are particularly successful in this respect.

Why do you suppose the pelargoniums perfume their leaves?

Perhaps it is to prevent animals from grazing them, for animals do not like to eat strong-scented things, even if to our senses the odor is agreeable. If this _is_ the reason, we are glad the pelargoniums selected a perfume that we can enjoy.

We think there may be some such reason for the fragrance of the pelargonium, because plants are never wasteful. They make only what will be useful to them in some way. They love to be beautiful, but are never satisfied unless theirs is a useful beauty. The fragrance of the leaves, however, may be due to some cause and useful for some purpose that we know not of.

THE GERANIUM FAMILY.

The Geranium People are rather unsettled as to their relatives—or, rather, _we_ are somewhat confused on the subject. Probably the geraniums know all about it, but they will not tell the botanists, so the botanists have to do the best they can by themselves.

Some say the tropæolum belongs to the Geranium Family, and it certainly does bear quite a strong family resemblance to the geraniums.

They also say the Impatiens Family is a branch of the geraniums and the pelargoniums, which you know we _always_ call geraniums. The crane’s bills and herb Roberts and all _their_ near relations of course are geraniums, and some say the wood sorrels belong to this distinguished family.

Whether these all belong to one family or not, one thing is certain: they are all agreeable to us, and are not so very numerous even when taken all together. The whole of them do not number half so many as do the branches of the Convolvulus Family.

Like the race of white people, they belong principally to temperate climates.

They do not all belong to _our_ climate, however.

The nasturtiums, for instance, are South Americans and Mexicans. They like to keep warm better than some other members of their family, and their seeds cannot, as a rule, live through our cold winters. But if we gather the seeds and put them away out of the fierce winter cold and plant them in the spring, then the nasturtiums will grow their best and please us with their bright flowers. We cannot help liking them, they are so jolly with their gay flowers and their round leaves with twisting stalks.

We like them, too, because the flower stem curls up and draws the seeds under the leaves out of the way of the young buds that are waiting to bloom.

I do not know whether wild nasturtiums are as large and bright as the cultivated ones. Very likely not, as people have taken great pains to make them large and bright by selecting the seeds of the largest flowers from year to year and giving them good soil in which to grow.

Perhaps the members of the Geranium Family we really know best are the pelargoniums from the Cape of Good Hope. It is about as warm in their African home as it is in our Florida, so of course they cannot live out of doors through our cold Northern winters. But we take them in the house when cold weather comes, and sometimes put them in the cellar.

Of course they do not grow much in the cellar, but they _rest_ there, and when they are taken out in the spring are all ready to wake up and blossom.

The whole Geranium Family seems to take extra care of its seeds.

We know how the nasturtium curls up its stem so as to draw the seeds below the leaves out of the way, giving the buds a chance to come out, and also protecting the seeds.

The pelargoniums do not do that, but they do something much more elaborate for the sake of their seed-children, as we know. They give them a parachute to fly with, for one thing. A parachute, you know, is a contrivance by which bodies can be sustained in the air while falling or blowing along in the wind.

But the parachute is not all,—they give them an auger by which to bore into the ground and plant themselves.

The North American crane’s bill seeds perform in a very similar way, their flowers and seed-cases being quite like those of the pelargonium.

How do you suppose North American crane’s bills came to be like South African pelargoniums?

This is a matter which needs investigating.

The pelargoniums are not as juicy as the nasturtiums, but they are somewhat juicy, and their juice has a slightly acid taste instead of being pungent, like the nasturtium juice.

Where pelargoniums live out of doors the year round they grow very large and have stems that are quite woody.

Some of them, as we know, are useful to the human race as well as ornamental, supplying food and an oil highly esteemed as a perfume.

The wood sorrels do not look much like the rest of the Geranium Family. But they do resemble it in their habit of caring for their seeds. Out in the fields you will find the small, yellow-flowered sheep sorrel, with its clover-like, sour-tasting leaves. Now hunt for a seed-pod. They are pretty little things that stand up something like Christmas candles. Touch a ripe one and it splits open down each of its five cells and shows you a row of white seeds in each. You think the seeds are not ripe because they are white, and you touch one of them. What has happened? That seed surely exploded! No, there it is—the other side of the table, not white, but dark brown. Queer performance, this. You touch another and another, and at last you get to understand it. Each seed is surrounded by an elastic white covering, and this it is that suddenly curls up, very much as the impatiens pod does, and sends the seed within it flying!

When night comes the sorrel goes to sleep. Its leaflets droop and shut together as you see in the picture, and the flowers, too, close. The sorrel loves the sunshine, and often does not open on cloudy days.

There are a great many sorrels in the world besides our sheep sorrel; in fact, we are told there are about two hundred and five of them!

We have only three or four out of all that number, and they are not all yellow like the sheep sorrel. One that lives in the cool Northern woods is white, with delicate pink veins. Pretty little things they are, and farther South there lives a pretty violet one.

Like the pelargoniums, the sorrels are to be found at the Cape of Good Hope. In fact, most of the two hundred and five kinds live there and in South America.

Like the pelargoniums, too, the South African sorrels are much larger and brighter than their American relatives.

We like them so well we raise them in our greenhouses and window boxes. They are much larger than our wild sorrels and have bright pink or white or yellow corollas.

Down in Peru, too, there grows a very useful sorrel; they call it “oca,” and raise it for its potatolike tubers which the people eat.

The Mexicans also have a sorrel with edible bulbs and bright red flowers. In fact, the sorrel, like the potato, has a habit of storing up plenty of underground food which is also good food for man, and several species of sorrel are raised for this purpose in different parts of the world.

In those places, instead of a potato field you have a sorrel field.

We often eat the leaves of the wood sorrel for the sake of their pleasant acid taste. The proper name of the sorrel is “oxalis,” and comes from a Greek word meaning “acid.” But if we were to extract this acid from the sorrel and then eat it, we would have a serious time, for in its concentrated form it is a fearful poison. It is sold under the misleading name of “salt of lemons,” and for this reason people often ignorantly taste it, thinking that “salt of lemons” can do them no harm.

This dangerous “salt of lemons” is very useful in calico printing, in dyeing, and in the bleaching of flax and straw.

The next time you come across a patch of sheep sorrel, stop and think of all it and its relatives are able to do for us.

We usually think of the Geranium Family as being merely ornamental; but, as we have seen, some kinds of tropæolum, several kinds of sorrel, and at least one kind of pelargonium yield edible tubers which are eaten in different parts of the world, and the modest little oxalis yields a substance valuable for manufacturing purposes.

Even our commonplace crane’s bill that blooms so abundantly in the woods in early summer has something for us, for from its roots a medicine is obtained.

Hyacinth Stories

THE HYACINTH.

Out in the garden there’s something so dear! Just as dear, Do you hear? Something that comes in the spring of the year Fragrant as roses and fresh as the dew, Purple and pink and violet too. Something new, Darling too. Guess what it is and I’ll show it to you!

SIGNS OF SPRING.

Out of doors are signs of spring. The buds on the trees look full, and some are beginning to burst. But there is very little life as yet.

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.

Soon the green buds undergo a change. The topmost one on each flower cluster softens to a tender blue or pink.

The green buds grow lovely as they stand on their stems in the sun. Delicate tints steal over them, the green color fades away, and many colors take its place.

They open into charming flowers and give forth a delightful fragrance. The whole garden is sweet with the odor of hyacinths, and we feel that the beautiful summer has sent us a messenger.

THE HYACINTH’S SCEPTRE.

Kings bear a sceptre, and so do I. Theirs is a symbol of power, and so is mine. Theirs is a costly rod with an emblem at the top Mine is a tall green rod bearing flower bells. My sceptre is called a “scape.” “Scape” means “sceptre,” the sign of kings.

TUNICS.

A tunic, as everybody knows, is a dress worn by the old Romans. The Greeks wore a garment very much like that of the Romans, and it, too, is often called a tunic.

Tunics did very well in a climate where it was always summer and upon people who did not have to hurry about and work hard. But, graceful as they are, and appropriate to Greece and Italy, they would hardly be suitable for an American business costume in midwinter. For a tunic is not very close fitting. It is a loose garment which would be apt to fly away in our Northern gales.

The tunic was sometimes confined at the waist by a girdle and sometimes let to hang loose.

We do not wear tunics, but we admire them very much in pictures, for they show the beautiful lines of the human form instead of concealing and altering them and making them ugly by ridiculous and tight-fitting clothes—very often tight in the wrong place, as is the case with modern garments.

But there _are_ tunics worn in America, and they are never tight in the wrong place, though, truth to tell, they are not loose and flowing like the Roman or Greek tunic.

Perhaps you do not know that so commonplace an object as an onion wears a tunic, yet I assure you it is true. And the onion does not come from Rome or Greece,—that is, probably not. As far as we can find out, that homely vegetable first saw the light in the southwestern part of Asia, but it was known in Rome and Greece at a very early date, and lived in those places long before it found its way to us.

So it has seen more tunics than we have, if it is not a native Greek or Roman. Not that its garments look at all like a classical tunic!

Probably its bulb is said to be “tunicated,” or covered with tunics, because the different scales wrap about it like so many garments, and in a general way the word “tunic” is used to mean any garment.

The hyacinth, too, has a tunicated bulb. It came from the Levant, a country where people wear loose garments like the Greek and Roman tunic. I do not think, however, the bulbs are called “tunicated” because they came from the lands where tunics are worn. I think it is merely a name the botanists gave them for convenience to tell that they were covered by coats or scales.

What do you suppose a hyacinth tunic is, anyway? Merely a leaf scale! That is, instead of growing into a leaf it remained a scale, and _some_ of the scales on a full-grown bulb are really the lower parts of the leaves. The upper part has fallen off and left the fleshy base to feed the plant.

Tulips have tunics too, and so have many other plants. And bulb tunics are a _very_ convenient sort of garment to have, for they not only wrap up the plant, but feed it!

They answer the same purpose that tubers do on potato roots. You know what tubers are? 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 material in the tuber, and the hyacinth grows at the expense of the food stored in the bulb. Of course, after a while green leaves form and make more food, but the very first food comes from the thick underground scales.

The hyacinth belongs to the royal Lily Family, and is a very great favorite with people all over the world. Sometimes its flowers are single and sometimes double, and they always give forth a delightful fragrance. Its home, as we know, is in the Levant, a country made up of the islands and the coast along the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, particularly of Asia Minor and Syria.

It grows so readily and comes up so early in the spring and is so lovely it is no wonder people everywhere cherish it. Its bulb is large and fleshy, and, as we know, is made up of thick _scales_. These scales are full of starch and other food materials to feed the young plant.

For the young plant is in the very center of the bulb, with the fleshy scales folded about it very much as the scales are folded about a tree bud. In fact, a bulb is very much like a bud. The bottom of the bulb is a _very_ short, broad stem. The scales grow on this stem as the leaves do on a branch. They are alternate in arrangement, but packed so closely together you have to look _very_ carefully in order to discover that they are arranged like leaves on a stem. After all, as we know, these scales are only modified leaves. The bracts of the pelargonium are leaves modified to protect the young buds, and the scales of the hyacinth are leaves modified to protect and feed the plant within.

For what do you think? At the very center of the hyacinth bulb is a tiny flower cluster wrapped about by half a dozen tiny leaves! These are white and delicate and very, very small. But in the spring they grow and come out of the bulb in the form of green leaves and bright flowers.

THE BEE.

I am a rollicking bumblebee. I sail through the air as it pleases me. I sail by the trees and around the flowers; I love the sun and hate the showers.

I have a taste does credit to me; I never eat bread and such fiddle-dee-dee. For honey and pollen’s the sensible food; They favor digestion and suit the mood.

I sleep in my nest all winter long, But rush fearlessly forth in the March wind’s song, For I’m sure there’s some one waiting for me, Since a hyacinth blue’s in love with this bee!

STORIES ABOUT ALL SORTS OF THINGS

NECTAR GUIDES.

The bee is always in a hurry. She flies from flower to flower as fast as she can.

She sees the flowers far off and comes straight to them, choosing the brightest. She has learned that the bright flowers hold much honey and often have guides to the nectary, so that she does not have to hunt about, but, alighting on a flower, follows the bright guide. Sometimes it is a spot in front of the nectary and sometimes a line leading to it. It leads her at once by the shortest path to the nectar, and since she is in such haste, the nectar guides are her good friends, helping her to save time.

CELLS.

Cells are a matter of importance.

To be sure there are cells and cells, and some are much more important than others.

For instance, there are prison cells, more’s the pity, and anther cells and honeycomb cells and ovary cells and many more like them. All these are small, hollow spaces with walls around them.

But there is another kind of cell, more important than all these others put together, and they are not hollow and do not always have a wall.

Perhaps you are not very much interested in cells, but you had better be in these we are going to talk about, for they have a great deal to do with football games and dancing and going to parties and picnics. In fact, without them there could be no football and no dancing and no parties nor picnics.

All these things depend upon cells. So we may as well begin at once to find out what they are.

These cells that we are going to talk about are alive. They are made of protoplasm. You do not know what protoplasm is? I can tell you it is time you did then, for if it had not been for protoplasm you would not be in the land of the living. The protoplasm made you; so if you are not interested in it, _I_ think you ought to have been a cabbage or a squash or a liriodendron or some other thoughtless vegetable not expected to be interested in protoplasm.

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.

Napoleon was small, and he was not handsome; yet if you had seen him, you would have seen the greatest man living in the world at that time.

So when you look at protoplasm you see something very much more wonderful than it seems. In fact, the great Napoleon himself owed his physical life to protoplasm, as did also Shakespeare and Plato, and every person who has ever lived, for protoplasm is the only living matter in the world.

You cannot understand that all in a minute, but you begin to see that protoplasm is _rather_ important, and as well worth knowing about as the latest fashion in bicycles or sleeve patterns.

Sometimes a bit of protoplasm lives all by itself. It is just a little speck of colorless, jelly-like substance. Yet it can do a number of things. One little creature, which is only a bit of protoplasm, has a name much larger than itself. We call it “Amœba.”

Rather a pretty name, on the whole, and very uncommon. I doubt if you know a single person by that name.

It is a name, too, that everybody ought to know.

Well, as I told you before, and shall probably tell you a great many more times, for I do not want you to forget it, the amœba is only a bit of protoplasm.

Yet it can go about. You watch it some fine day under your microscope and see it travel. It runs out a little, thin bit of its body, so [Illustration: [Cells]] and then the rest of the body sort of pulls itself up to that. In this way, by putting out little finger-like projections and drawing the rest of the body up to them, it can move quite a distance if you give it time enough. You can imagine so changeable a creature as the amœba can scarcely be found twice of the same shape, and how its friends recognize it is more than I can tell. Suppose you were in the habit of changing your shape whenever you moved, being long and thin one minute, short and thick another, having fourteen arms one day and none the next? How _could_ you expect people to know you when they met you?