Part 2

Those who have seen lettuce only on the table, or growing in the early spring garden or in the green-house, will feel like laughing at the idea of lettuces flying!

Yet they do fly. At least their seeds do.

Sometimes lettuces look like rosettes growing out of the ground, and sometimes they look like little cabbages. But that is only the leaves.

If lettuces are let alone and not picked, in time they will “go to seed”; a stalk will grow up from the middle, with small leaves on it and a great many little flower heads that look somewhat like tiny dandelions.

These flower heads are made like those of the dandelion or thistle.

The lettuce has no prickles, but its juice is milky and bitter, and gets more bitter as the plant grows older. The lettuce flowers have akenes like the dandelion, and each akene has a plume like that of the dandelion.

Away fly the pretty plumed akenes, and lettuce is thus sown by the wayside. But one seldom sees garden lettuce growing, except in gardens; for it is so tender the strong, rough weeds choke and kill it.

There is a wild lettuce, however, that has a large number of flower heads, and of course a great many pretty, silky, tufted akenes. These lettuces sometimes shine as if they had been snowed upon when their silky, white plumed akenes first open out.

I advise you to see if you can find some of them next summer. The best place to look is alongside fences and hedges and in the corners of pastures.

There is a lettuce so troublesome to the farmer that large sums of money have been appropriated to exterminate it. It is called the Prickly Lettuce, because its leaves and stalks are prickly. It came to this country from Europe. It is quite as destructive to the farmer’s crops as is the Canada thistle.

CLEMATIS.

Of course the clematis akenes fly. Nothing so fluffy as they, in the seed world, could do otherwise.

The wild clematis that grows over the bushes in some swamps is a beautiful vine with glossy leaves and clusters of pretty white flowers. After the snowy flowers have gone it is still beautiful, for then each little akene waves a long, shining, curly plume. The whole vine is covered with these shining, twining plumes.

But a day comes when they no longer shine. Each curling plume looks like a mass of down, for its parts have separated and stand out, and we now see that it is shaped like a feather, a downy fluffy feather. The whole vine is a soft fluffy mass.

This does not last long, for the akenes leave the parent vine and are borne aloft on their airy plumes by the wind that scatters them far and wide.

Some fall upon the right kind of soil, where they are covered by the leaves of autumn, and lie safely until spring comes. Then they wake up and grow each into a beautiful clematis vine with shining leaves.

There is a beautiful clematis with large blue-purple flowers that grows in the mountains of Virginia and in some other places.

ASTERS AND GOLDEN-ROD.

Asters and golden-rod blossom in the fall. Then the country roads are lovely to walk over, and the fields are as bright as can be with blue or purple or white asters and yellow golden-rod.

Some kinds of golden-rod and asters blossom in the summer, but most of them wait until late in the season. They are almost the last flowers to come and almost the last to go.

When their bright flowers fade they are still pretty. Each “flower” of the asters is like the dandelion, a cluster of very small flowers, and the golden-rod flower head is made up of very many tiny flowers.

Each little flower has its own akene and plume quite like the dandelion, but a great deal smaller, and in time the clusters that were flowers become clusters of soft downy plumes.

This state does not last long, for the akenes are blown away by the wind and sown far and near over field and roadside.

If you brush against the downy aster and golden-rod heads when the seeds are ripe, the akenes will cling to your clothes like cobwebs and you will carry them about with you until finally they fall off.

Perhaps that is one way by which the golden-rod and aster seeds travel about; they cling to animals that pass and so are carried far away. But they do not cling as well as some other seeds we are soon to know about.

THE WILLOW.

The willow that children know and love the best is the pussy willow. It grows in damp or swampy places and before the leaves come out in the spring the “pussies” are seen on the branches. They are little, soft, silvery pussies, and it is not everybody who knows what they really are.

Each “pussy” or catkin, as we must call it, is a group of small flowers, or rather flower-buds, for after the flowers are fully out the pussies lose their soft, silky appearance and no longer deserve to be called pussies.

The older catkins are covered with stamens full of yellow pollen or else with seed pods. For willows bear two kinds of flowers, the stamen-bearing, or staminate flowers, and the seed-bearing, or pistillate flowers.

The staminate flowers grow on one willow tree, and the pistillate ones on another.

The pollen in the staminate flowers is very abundant and is carried by the wind or by insects to the pistillate flowers. If you shake a twig of ripe staminate catkins, your hands and clothes will be covered with pollen dust.

Bees are fond of willow pollen and eagerly gather it in the early spring. The willow catkin has a tiny drop of nectar at the base of each little flower, and bees and flies are fond of this and visit the willows to get it. Of course, as the insects fly from one catkin to another, they carry pollen from one to another.

After a time the staminate flowers wither and fall, but the pistillate ones are followed by seed pods, and the stem that bears them lengthens to make room for the growing pods, and at last when the seeds are ripe the pods split open and out come the _tiniest_ of little seeds, each with a tiny plume of down, and away they fly.

There are a great many species of willow, and not all of them are as pretty as the pussy willow. One reason why the pussy willow is so pretty is that the catkins appear before the leaves. In some willows the catkins come with the leaves, and in some they come after the leaves are fully grown. Many willows have bright red or yellow or green stems that give color to the landscape even in midwinter.

In all willows the pistillate catkins bear pods that open and let out fluffy seeds.

The cotton-wood trees are relatives of the willows. Their seeds are so very downy that when they are ripe the ground beneath the trees will often be white, as though a light snow had fallen.

It is because the seeds are so abundantly supplied with soft cottony plumes that the tree is called cotton-wood.

Poplars are also closely related to the willows and, like them, have fluffy seeds.

In the early summer, if you look in the right place, you will see plenty of them.

Willow and poplar twigs are very strong and limber, and some kinds are used to make baskets and chairs and cradles and a great many other useful things. The slender young twigs are woven together and make very strong and durable articles.

Since only the long twigs can be used, people get them in large quantities by cutting off the heads of the trees, when long sprouts shoot up all around the ends of the cut limbs. Cutting off the tops of the trees in this way is called pollarding, and a pollarded willow or poplar is rather a funny sight, particularly after it has had its head cut off a number of times.

Willow branches about as large around as one’s finger make very good whistles in the spring of the year. The sap flowing under the bark loosens it, so that by pounding the twig the bark can be slipped off unbroken, the wood beneath cut as desired, and the bark slipped on again.

The dotted lines show how the wood should be cut away under the bark.

Willow twigs also make very good switches, and long, ah, very long ago, when children used to be naughty, willow switches were in great demand.

In these later days children are never naughty I suppose—or is it only that switching has gone out of fashion?

These switches did not come from weeping willows, though that certainly would have been a very appropriate name for them.

Weeping willows are large and beautiful trees that came from the eastern part of Asia. The twigs are very long and slender and hang down like a veil all about the tree.

Weeping willows are favorites in parks and pleasure grounds, and it used to be the fashion to plant them in cemeteries, at the heads of gravestones.

Everybody who has tried to preserve bird skins, or the skins of small animals, doubtless knows what salicylic acid is, but not everybody knows that this is obtained from the bark of willows and poplars. Some species of willow contain a great deal of the substance from which salicylic acid is made.

Salicylic acid prevents animal tissue from decaying, and it is also used as a medicine. It is not poisonous, but is rather unpleasant to handle, as it is apt to make one sneeze.

The bark of willows is also used in Europe for tanning, instead of oak or hemlock bark, which is commonly used in this country.

“Tan bark” is bark that has been ground up and had the “tannin,” or substance that hardens leather, extracted from it. The tan bark is then put on roads or walks, or sometimes on city streets, to deaden the noise. It is often used in the country for banking up houses in the winter.

Willows grow quickly, and some of those that like wet places are often planted on sandy shores of lakes or streams, or on banks, that their roots may bind the sand or loose earth together and so keep the shore from shifting.

Very often a willow twig can be made to grow by merely sticking the cut end in damp earth, and many a large willow has thus been planted as a twig by the hand of a little child.

CATTAILS.

Cattail seeds fly, too! It is surprising to know that cattails blossom. But they do.

In the early spring, cattails look green instead of brown, and the thickened green part near the top is made of very, very small flowers packed tightly together.

The brown velvety part of the cattail succeeds the green flowers, and is but a collection of tiny seed pods that fluff out with tiny plumes in the autumn.

There are two kinds of flowers in cattails, as there are in willows, only in the cattails the two kinds are on the same plant. If you look at a cattail in its green stage, you will easily find the staminate flowers growing at the very top of the stalk,—at _A_ in the picture. Out of these staminate flowers you can shake clouds of yellow pollen. Below the staminate flowers at _B_ are the pistillate flowers, very small and packed very closely together. Each one has a seed pod at its base, and each seed pod when ripe has a tiny plume.

Of course the seed pods fly away on the wings of the wind. Being so small and light, they are sometimes carried a long distance.

A good many, no doubt, are so unfortunate as to fall on dry ground, and that is the end of them.

But others fall in swamps and ditches, where they grow vigorously and often fill up the swamp or the ditch so that it becomes a bed of cattails.

The downy cattail seeds are gathered in some places and made into mattresses for people to sleep on.

GERANIUMS.

The bright flowers raised in hothouses or in windows, and that we call geraniums, do not often bear seed in the house.

In that part of the world where they grow wild, and out of doors in the summer time, they do. And their seeds are very curious indeed; for they can not only fly about but can bury themselves in the ground.

The geranium flower bears five curious seed pods that grow close together around a common center. Each seed pod has one seed, and when the seed is ripe the pod splits away from the center-piece. The pod runs up to a point, as you can see in the picture.

There is a long feather-like plume packed in the long stem-like part of the pod, and this comes out when the pod splits away. Then the whole thing is floated off by the wind. This curious plume curls up like a corkscrew when dry, and so pushes the seed down into the grass or the earth where it has fallen. When the plume is made damp by rain or dew it straightens out.

At the bottom of the seed case are a few hairs or bristles that point backward and hold the seed so that it cannot be pulled out of the ground when the plume curls and straightens, but must always be pushed farther in.

It is a good plan for every one who has not seen the geranium seed case try to plant itself, to gather some ripe seeds and lay them on the earth in a flower pot. Let them get dry, then moisten them, then let them become dry again, and so on, until one has seen just how they work.

COTTON.

“Down South” are a great many cotton fields. Cotton was brought to the United States from China and other far-away places. It did not find its way here accidentally with other seeds, like the dandelions and Canada thistles, but was brought on purpose and carefully cultivated.

A cotton field in early summer is rather a pretty sight. It is covered with light green little plants in straight rows; they have pretty leaves and yellowish flowers that soon turn red. These flowers are about the size of a morning-glory.

In the fall a cotton field is much more interesting. Then the cotton plants are three or four feet high and have branched out into quite large bushes. The leaves have withered, but the bushes are covered with cotton bolls, or pods, out of which are bursting quantities of snowy white cotton. The field looks as if a skyful of soft little snowballs had fallen upon it.

The cotton flowers are succeeded by pods, or bolls as they are called, and these contain black seeds about the size of a white bean. Each seed when ripe wears a coat of long, soft, white cotton fibers, and when the bolls split open to let out the seeds, out gush streams of snowy cotton.

A cotton field is most picturesque during the picking season, when the negroes, the women with bright kerchiefs over their heads, go into the fields, pick the cotton, and carry it away in large baskets.

Each cotton seed is covered with cotton fiber that clings very close and has to be removed by machinery. The machine that does this is called a cotton gin, and is a very interesting and wonderful machine.

Cotton seeds are cleaned more than once; the first time the long fibers are pulled off, and this is the best of the cotton. Then the seeds are cleaned again of less valuable, because shorter, fibers, and finally of the short fuzzy coat that clings to them after the second cleaning. The result of the last cleaning is a very inferior cotton, used only for a few kinds of cheap cloth.

Not all cotton has white fiber. The Nankin cotton, which is grown near the mouth of the Mississippi River in this country, is naturally of a light tan color.

Cotton is one of the most useful plants in the world, and a great deal of attention is given to raising and manufacturing it.

The cotton has to go through a good many processes before it is finally ready to be spun into thread and then woven into cloth.

Some very useful cotton is not spun into thread, but comes to us in clean, soft rolls, which we call cotton batting. This is useful for many household purposes, and when very thoroughly cleaned is used by doctors in dressing wounds.

A large part of our clothing is made from the cotton that grows on the seeds of the cotton plant. The plant did not make the cotton for us, but probably to enable its seeds to be carried away by the wind and firmly fastened to the ground, when they lodged there. For a cotton seed clings very tightly to the earth, particularly after it has been wet.

Cotton seeds are very useful aside from the cotton they are clothed with. They contain a good deal of oil and are ground in mills, that the oil may be pressed out. This oil is put to a number of uses, and when purified is even used instead of olive oil as food. The meal that is left after the oil has been pressed out makes a valuable fertilizer, and is also used as food for cattle. Horses will not eat it, but cows are so fond of it that they will come long distances to the mills in order to lick up what meal they can find. This is the way its value as a food for cattle was discovered.

Cotton-seed meal is bright greenish yellow in color, and as it colors everything it touches, the cotton-seed mills are rather picturesque to look at, though not very pleasant to walk about in.

The bark of the root of the cotton plant is used as a medicine. But though so many parts of this wonderful plant are useful, the cotton that covers the seeds is the most valuable of all.

OTHER FLY-AWAYS.

A great many other plants have plumed seeds, and some have seeds with cottony coats, but of all the cotton-covered seeds those of the cotton plant are the only ones with fibers long and strong enough to be spun and woven.

It would be useless to try to tell about all the fly-away seeds. There are so many of them one would never get through. But it is great fun to discover them for ourselves. If we watch through the summer, we shall find many and many of them.

Quite a number of the grasses have plumes to their seeds, and some of these plumed grasses are very pretty indeed. We often see them used to decorate houses, and in Florida one can see very beautiful grass plumes growing in swamps. Everywhere the fields and woods are full of seed wanderers that fly about to find a home, and all that any one need do who wants to see these pretty things is to look about and find them.

SEEDS THAT FLY WITH WINGS.

MAPLES.

Maple seeds also fly, but they have no silky or feathery or cottony plumes. They have wings instead. The fruit of the maple tree is called a samara and consists of a seed pod with a wing. Usually two pods grow together, though when thoroughly dry they fall apart.

The wings are thin and light, and the wind sometimes carries them a long distance. The maple blooms in the spring or early summer, and though its flowers have only stamens or pistils and no bright petals, yet they are very pretty.

Maples, like willows and cattails, often have two kinds of flowers. One maple tree will often have all staminate flowers, and will look as if trimmed with fringe, as the staminate flowers have slender stems like threads.

The red maple, which blooms early in the spring before its leaves come out, has bright red fringes. Sometimes these red-flowered trees bloom in January, in Florida, when the trees and bushes around them are bare, and you can imagine they make the swamps where they grow look very bright.

The pistillate flowers are not quite as airy as the staminate ones, but still they make pretty fringes upon the trees.

The wind blows the pollen from the staminate flowers to the pistillate ones growing on neighboring trees, and that is why the flowers hang out on long stems.

Some maples have green fringes and some have yellow ones, but all are beautiful.

After the flowering season is over, the staminate flowers disappear. But the pistillate flowers are followed by clusters of samaras, which are sometimes almost as bright in color and as pretty as the flower fringes.

When the samaras are ripe, they fall from the tree and are blown about by the wind. They cannot fly as far as the plumed seeds, but they sometimes get carried quite a distance.

The seed within the samara often sprouts soon after it falls. You can see little maple trees starting to grow by the roadside, or even along city sidewalks or in lawns.

The samaras of the early flowering maple trees fall quite early in the summer, but there are other maples whose samaras remain on the trees until autumn.

Maples make beautiful shade trees, and some species grow to a large size. One of the largest and most beautiful of them is the sugar maple, which is not only valuable as a shade tree, but yields delicious maple syrup from its sap.

The bark of this tree is “tapped,” that is, a hole is bored through it into the wood beneath, early in the spring, and a little wooden tube or trough is driven into the hole. A pail is hung or set beneath to catch the sap as it runs out. Sap runs best when the days are warm and the nights cold; then there are merry times in the sugar camps.

The sap is collected in large kettles and boiled to syrup, or until it hardens into sugar. Just before it is ready to turn to sugar, it makes delicious “wax.” You pour the hot, thick syrup upon snow, and when it thickens into a sticky paste you eat it. It is better than any kind of candy—at least I think so.

A great deal of sugar is made in the New England States, where the maple grows abundantly, and in the early days the only sugar some of the people had was maple sugar.

Sometimes the sap of other trees, as birches or elms, is made into syrup, but none is as abundant or as good as the maple syrup.

The wood of the sugar maple is hard and is valuable for furniture and other uses. Indeed the wood of most of the maples is prized for furniture making.

The bird’s eye maple is a very pretty satiny wood dotted over with round spots that look a little like eyes. It comes from certain sugar maples whose wood is full of little knotty places.

The curled maple is also a pretty wood with wavy, shining lines made by irregular streaks in the wood. It is sometimes found in sugar maples and sometimes in other maples. Maple wood is light in color, and the bark of the tree is rather smooth. It is gray in most species, and often has white spots on it.

ELMS.

The American elm is one of the most beautiful trees in the world, it is so majestic in size and so graceful in form.

If you do not know the elm tree, get some one to point it out to you at once, and you will feel that you have made a new friend. It is a very good thing to make friends with the trees and to learn to know them when you see them.

Elm trees have winged seed pods or samaras. The trees are covered with pretty, short fringes in the springtime—very pretty, but not as airy and pretty as the maple fringes. The pistillate flowers are followed by samaras that do not grow two together, and that have the wing growing around them instead of from one end.

The bark of the elm is very handsome; it is marked quite regularly and is easy to recognize. It is a good thing to learn to know a tree by its bark. The bark of trees is an interesting and beautiful subject for study.

The wood of the elm is tough and hard, and is used in building ships and making wheels, and for other purposes where a tough, hard wood is required.

There are a number of species of elm trees, but the best-known one is the beautiful American elm that is everywhere used in parks and for shade trees. Next to this is the red elm, or slippery elm, whose inner bark is fragrant and mucilaginous and good to chew. This bark is good for colds and is sometimes ground up and made into lozenges.