Part 2

Now you shall hear the story of a plant’s life. The life-story I shall tell you is of a plant that lives one year. This story begins with a seed and ends with a seed.

The story of any plant would be this, only that the story of some plant-lives would run through many years. During these years they would ripen many crops of seeds.

Let us take the story of a bean’s life. We choose this because a bean has a plain and simple story. All its parts are large enough to see. Any one of you can get beans to help tell the story.

To enjoy this story you should get a bowl, or pot, of earth, and seven beans. Now first look closely at these beans. They have a thick shining skin. Break open one bean. It is made in two halves, which have a little seam around them longwise. On the middle of one side is a dent. Your mother will tell you that is the _bean’s eye_. This dent goes through the outer skin.

Now soak your other six beans in water for a few hours. If you soak them they will sprout sooner when you plant them. Now put one bean in the middle of the pot, or bowl, of earth, and the other five around the sides. Do not bury them too deep. Let about half an inch of earth lie over them. Keep the earth moist. Set the pot in the sun and in fresh, but not too cold, air.

When you took your beans to plant, did they look just as when you put them in the water? No. They were swollen with the water, and the skin was wrinkled. You could see the seam around the bean, and the eye, much plainer than when the bean was dry.

In a day or two you may dig up one bean from the edge of the pot. Now you will see a small round thing, shaped a little like your lead-pencil point, coming out of the eye of the bean.

Take a needle and gently split the bean open. The upper end of this tiny stem is bent over, and has a little wrinkled knob on it.

In another day you may dig up a second bean. Split it; you will see quite plainly that the wrinkled knob is a pair of leaves, and the round object is a stem.

Wait a day or two more and dig up the third bean. The stem is putting out wee roots. The leaves have come out of the bean and are trying to get to the top of the earth. The two thick halves of your bean are held, by little thread-like stems, to the main stalk of the new plant. The skin that was on the bean is now a small dry husk.

In a few days your fourth bean will be well above ground. You will notice that the two thick halves of the bean you planted are now turning green, and look like thick leaves. At first they lay side by side. The skin was like a little cap over the ends of the two.

Perhaps in that state the bean made you think of a new chick just out of the shell, with a piece of the shell still on its head. Did you ever see that? Soon the bit of husk falls away. Then these two parts of the bean spread from each other. One is on one side the stem, one on the other.

They look like leaves. We call them “the seed-leaves.” You will see that as the plant grows, these shrink up. That is because the young plant is feeding on them. The thick part of the bean is the plant’s first food.

The bean which you put in the middle of the pot has gone through all these changes. Its two little wrinkled leaves become greener and larger. Now they show their deep green color, and are of a heart shape. They have long stems. Between these stems is a little bud, or growing-point. It shoots up and puts out more leaves.

By this time the thick seed-leaves are quite shrunk up and dead. Dig up that fifth bean, the last one on the side of the pot. Can you tell why the seed-leaves are dead? The plant has eaten up all the food in them. And now it has a strong root of fibres, and can take its own food from the soil.

If you look near the roots of trees in the wood or garden, you will, no doubt, find oaks, cherries, maples, other little trees, in all these stages of growth.

Your last bean-plant grows fast. It is tall and slim. It needs a stick to climb on. Notice how the stem winds around the stick. See, the new leaves are pale and smooth. As they grow, they become darker and have hairs on them.

Break off a bit of stem and leaf. There is juice in them. That is sap. It runs all through the plant in little pipes or tubes. It carries in it the mineral food the root-mouths suck from the earth.

By and by you will see a new thing in among the leaves. It is a bud, but not a leaf-bud. It is shorter and thicker than the leaf-buds, and it is twisted. As it grows, its green cover opens, and you see a little white, red, or purple color.

This is the flower-bud. Slowly the colored petals unroll. If you have several flowers on your vine, you can take one to pieces, to look at all the flower parts. The seed-bag at the bottom of the pistil will be so small that you will not notice it.

As the flowers grow older and seem to fade a little, cut off one more to look at. Now you see the seed-pod growing at the bottom of the pistil. The pistil is made of three parts; the seed-bag, the stem or post, and a little cushion at the top.

Now your pretty bean-flower has faded, and fallen away, dead. But what is this where the flower was? A little sharp, green thing is here! Why, it is a tiny bean-pod! Every day it grows larger. You can see the little beans through the skin of the pod.

By and by the pod has its full growth. It is brown and hard and dry. It will crack open easily. It cracks all around into two halves. Here are the beans fastened to the sides of the pod, by little thread-like stems. Just such beans as you planted in the spring!

All the spring and the summer your bean-plant grew. Now it is done growing. The cold autumn has come. The seed is ripe.

But what is the matter with your bean-plant? It is turning hard and brown and dry. It is dead. It will do no good to water it. Its roots drink no more; they are dead. It was made to grow only from spring to fall. From seed to seed, that is its story; that is what it was made for.

Here, folded up in these hard dry beans lie the bean-vines of next year. These new beans will have, if you plant them, such a life-story as this that we have been reading.

LESSON V.

THE GROWTH OF PLANTS.

How do plants grow? That is a very great question, but we will try to find a little part of the answer.

You know when you look at a flower, as a lily, you find in the middle of it some tall, slender parts which you are told are stamens and a pistil. The pistil usually stands right in the centre of the flower. It seems to be the most precious part, and all the other parts take care of it.

I knew a boy who told his sister that “they said at school that plants had little guns.” He thought the word pistil meant something to shoot with! But if there is any shooting done by plants, it is done by the stamens, and not by the pistil.

On the top of the stamen is a little box, to hold the pollen, or flower-dust. You read of that some time ago in the lesson about bees and ants, in your other Nature Readers.

When the pollen is of full size, or ripe, the little box bursts open, and out the pollen flies. The growth of the plant begins here, with the pollen.

A tiny grain of pollen, falling on the top of the pistil, begins to grow. It puts out little threads like roots. These grow down the stem, or post, of the pistil into the seed case. There they find the seed germs, and when the pollen comes to them, the germs begin to grow. They grow very fast.

It is then that the pretty flowers fade. The work of the blossom is done when the pollen is ripe, and the seed germs begin to grow.

But while the blossom dies, the seed bag grows larger and larger. As the seeds ripen, the bag, or case, that holds them becomes brittle. It will break easily. Often this pod, or seed bag, bursts open when the seeds are ripe. Then the seeds fly all around.

They fall upon the ground. There with the wind and rain and the slight change of the top soil, they slowly sink into the dirt. They keep moist and warm until spring. Then they sprout out as you see the beans do.

Some seeds will die if left to lie all winter in the ground. We say such seeds are not hardy. They are seeds that are not native to the place where they grow. Seeds are hardy in their native places.

Now you have seen how the seed germ grows to be a ripe seed. You have seen how the ripe seed sprouts into a plant. You know that plants grow. They increase in size. They put out more leaves. They have flowers and seeds. How is this done? It cannot all be explained, but a little of it can be.

Look at yourself. You grow. Suppose you did not eat? Would you grow? If you stop eating you will shrink up, and be thin, and even die. Have you never heard people say that if children do not have enough to eat, they will be small and not grow well?

You grow by eating. So does the plant. But mind you, when we speak of the plant as eating, we mean really _drinking_. The food the plant takes from the earth must come to it in a liquid form.

You know of some insects which take their food by sucking the juice out of things.[6] So the plants get their mineral food, held in water. They suck the water out of the ground, by the wee mouths at the tips of the root fibres.

You know, when it is very dry the plants droop. People say “it is so dry that the crops will not grow.” Even the leaves of the trees die and fall off in a very dry time. They die for lack of food-drink.

You have a stomach where the food that you get is so changed that it will make for you good blood. The blood feeds and builds up every part of your body. The plant has no stomach, but its leaves serve it for the same purpose.

In the leaves the plant food is turned into stuff like the plant. But how does the food pass into the leaves? See the tall tree! How does the plant food go from the roots to the top-most leaves? It runs up little pipes or cells.

Plant stems are made of bundles of these tiny pipes. Do you now fancy long slim pipes, as long as the stem or trunk of a tree? Dear me, no! These tubes are very short.

But the bundles of them are laid along, all up the stem. They are laid end to end. Or you may call it one long tube, with little walls, or partitions across. How does the sap pass through these walls? It would be very hard to tell.

What we know is, that it does go through very quickly. Take a flower with a clear green stem. Put it into a glass of water in which is some red or blue color. You can watch the rise of the colored water by the change in the color of the stem.

Take, in your garden or flower-pot, a plant that is dry and drooping. Pour water on it. Soak the earth about it well. In a very little time you will see the plant revive. The leaves will look fresh. The flowers will hold up their drooping heads.

I have seen a plant quite changed in this way, in half an hour. So you see, in this little time the roots drank the water from the earth. The water, as sap, ran up all the pipes, through all the partition walls. The flower was fed in every part.

When the plant is young and tender, it takes in much of its food through the whole surface or skin. It drinks in air, rain, and dew, through its skin. But as the plant gets older, and harder, it feeds more and more by the new roots and young leaves. At last, it takes almost all its food by the root and new leaves. I shall soon tell you what leaves eat.

Why then does any plant or tree look so much better for a good washing? One reason is that the dust is washed off. Then the pores, or little holes in the skin, are free and open. The plant can breathe through all its skin.

Do not forget that. Your skin is also full of little pores. They need to be kept open by plenty of washing.

Let us go back to those little root-mouths. When they drink water, they get some solid stuff. Every drop of water has a mite of mineral in it. It is this solid matter that makes plant fibre. It is this that is left as ashes when you burn a plant, or bit of wood.

The juice of plants is called _sap_. When the root drinks the water from the earth, it travels up through the pipes, through all the cell-wells. So it soon reaches the leaves. What do the leaves do with it?

The leaves, having a wide surface, spread out the sap to the light and air. The heat of the sun cooks the sap. That is, it sets free, in a sort of steam, the clear water. The solid parts of the sap are left.

You know that things are made thicker by cooking. Does not the molasses become thicker when you cook it for candy?

When the sap is made thicker it is like glue. But it is still very thin glue. Also the light and air and heat change the sap in other ways of which I cannot now tell you.

But the sap, being changed in the leaf, is now true plant stuff. It must travel through the plant to build it up.

It is only in the green parts of the plant that the sap is changed to true plant material. What was at first mineral, held in water and air, is now vegetable, or plant matter. Now you see why a plant must have air and light, or it will not grow.

Now that it is fit for plant food, the sap sets out to run through all the plant. It must go to every part to build all up.

There are not two sets of tubes, one for raw and one for cooked sap. All must run through the same cells. So you see, the sap will be mixed. The raw sap going up has some food sap in it. The food sap runs about with some raw sap mixed with it.

Yet, after all, each kind reaches the right place. All the raw sap is cooked, all the food sap builds the plant. Here it builds root, there leaf, there stem, there flower, or seed.

Did you ever notice how fast a plant will grow? Choose out some flower or weed. Watch it. See how the tiny stem becomes tall and stout. See how the little leaves grow large and thick. A sunflower is a fine plant to watch in this way.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Nature Reader, No. 1, pp. 29, 65.

LESSON VI.

THE FOOD OF PLANTS.

You saw how in the bean a deal of food had been stored up for the young plant. So in the tuber of the potato, and the seed of corn, food is stored up. This food is stored up so that the young plant can grow in the dark, before it gets to air and light. Also it can grow before its root-mouths are able to drink for it.

The food so stored up is mostly starch. It is much such starch as your mother uses for the clothes.

Starch so laid up in the plant can turn sweet and change to sugar. The beet root has much sugar in it. A pea has sugar in it. So has corn. In the sugar-cane there is so much sugar that the cane tastes very sweet when you chew it. The sap of one kind of maple tree has much sugar in it. Did you ever boil down maple sap to sugar?

In some thick plants, like the cactus, much food stuff stays in the stems. Usually it goes to all parts of the plant. The leaves, as the thinnest parts, keep the least. In the beet, carrot, potato, and others, much food is stored in what we call the root. This becomes a cellar or pantry, full of laid-up food.

As the food goes about the plant to build it, the little pipes or cells growing larger divide off into other cells. They set up new walls. The plant becomes larger as its cells increase. We will not try to explain this further to you. You might think it dull.

Perhaps you would like to know what it is that the plant drinks out of the soil?

The dirt--as you call the “top-crust” of the earth--is made partly of mineral matter. Men and animals cannot eat mineral matter. But the sap carries this to the leaves. It is not in a solid but in a liquid form. Every leaf is a little kitchen where, with the sun for a fire, the earthy stuff is cooked and changed into vegetables.[7]

Now they are good food for animals. The minerals carried in grass and clover are eaten by the ox and the cow, and so are turned into good beef and milk. The wheat is partly made of mineral substances changed to plant stuff. Wheat is made into bread. The bread feeds boys and girls.

So the beef and butter that were grass and, before that earthy matter, and the wheat that was once partly mineral, turns at last into rosy flesh and blood for you who read this lesson. Well! Well! There are many wonders in this world!

If all plants liked and used the same food, our food would be too much of one kind. But as plants eat many kinds of minerals, through them we receive material to build all parts of our bodies. We need lime for our bones. We need sugar. We need salt in our bodies. Plants eat from the soil lime, salt, chalk, iron, and many other minerals.

Suppose you go into the country. Why, here is corn in this field! Last year clover was here! You say to the farmer: “Why do you change things in this way? Why does not your wheat grow where it grew last year?”

“Oh,” says the farmer, “my crops will not grow every year in the same place. Next year I shall have this cornfield put down in grass for a while.”

“But why, why, Mr. Farmer? Why not have the grass-field always the grass-field? Why not have the wheat-field always in wheat?”

“It is because each plant has some chief kind of mineral food that it needs most. It takes more of that kind out of the ground. After a time it eats up all of that sort of mineral that is within reach of its roots in one field. Then the crop must be grown in a new place, out of which the mineral has not been eaten.

“By and by the sun, rain, frost, acting on the ground, bring up more of the kind of mineral that was used. In the meantime some other plant that needs more of something else will grow in that field.

“So, after a time, the wheat, or corn, can be planted in its old field again. But if crops grow year after year in the same field they will be sickly for lack of food.

“New, rich earth that has never been tilled, will feed the same crops many years.”

While we are in the country, let us look around at what the farmer does. Here he brings cart-loads of stuff from the stables. He scatters it over his fields. Here he brings barrels of a kind of dust. He puts that too over the ground.

“O, Mr. Farmer, what are you doing now?”

“I am putting food on the ground for my crops.” The plants have eaten much of the food from the earth. These things contain more of the same kind of food.

Men have studied plants until they know what each kind needs to eat. They put this kind of food on the ground and it is carried to the plant by means of water.

What are these things that the farmer puts on his field? Bones are ground into bone dust. Fish are also ground into a powder or dust. Shells and sea-weeds and lime are scattered over the ground. Dead horses and other animals buried in what is called a muck heap, until they are decayed and fall into pieces, are among the material that the farmer brings to enrich the soil.

Do you not see that all this food would be of no use to the plant were it not for the green leaves? The green leaves turn the raw sap into food for plants and men.

The green leaves also take other things from the air and build them up into plant stuff. Our breath, the smoke from our fires, become food for plants, and so food for men. I shall tell you of this in another lesson.

Thus you see the green leaves are the stomach of the plant. In them all the food is made of use.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] This process is not only a cooking by heat, but the rays of light cause chemical changes which cannot be explained in a book like this.

LESSON VII.

SEEDS AND LEAVES.

The seed is the egg of the plant. Just as the new chick is in the egg of the hen, or the new wasp is in the egg of the wasp, the new plant is in the seed.

Let us look at a hen’s egg. It has a shell. Inside the shell is the clear white. Inside the white is the yellow ball, or yolk. The shell keeps the white and yolk safe. The white and yolk of the egg make the food by which the chick lives and grows, before it is hatched. In the yolk you may see a tiny spot, which is the germ out of which the young chick will grow.

The eggs of all birds and insects vary little from this plan. The flower-seed is also an egg made on this same pattern.

The skin you saw on the bean serves for the shell. There is an inner skin often, like the silken skin inside the egg-shell. The food stored up in the seed-leaves serves as the yolk and white of the egg. The tiny germ between answers to the spot in the yolk, which is the chick germ.

The seeds of flowers differ more than the eggs of birds and insects. For some seeds have no coats at all. Some have only one. But in this lesson we speak of seeds as they commonly are. We tell you of seeds as you are likely to see them. The rarer things you must learn in larger books.

Let us look at seeds a little. Think how they differ in size. A great cocoanut is a very huge seed. If you ask your mother to show you her garden-seeds, you will find some as small as the finest grains of dust.

Seeds vary in color. Did any one ever give you a little round, bright India bean? It was red as a drop of blood. It had a jet black mark on one side.

If you look in the grocer’s window, you will see yellow peas and green ones. You will see beans,--black, white, brown, yellow, purple, and spotted. Some of the garden-seeds are purple. Some look like the filings of steel, or silver, or gold.

Seeds vary in shape. You know how acorns and chestnuts look; they are seeds. Cherry-pits--stones, you call them, they are so hard--are round. A melon-seed is flat. Some seeds are three-cornered. Some have lines and dots as if they were carved.

Some seeds have little hooks on them to hold them to the ground so that they may not blow away. Other seeds use these hooks to catch upon things, that will carry them from place to place.

Did you ever see a thistle or dandelion seed go sailing through the air? It looks like a little silver ship, or balloon. It has a fine little feather on it to keep it up. The reason why thistles and dandelions grow far and wide is, that their seeds are carried about on the breeze.

If you live in town, go and look at the seeds in the seed-man’s window. If you live in the country, suppose you collect all the seeds you can.

Did you ever think in how many ways seeds are kept from harm? What is a melon, or a pumpkin, but a big seed box?

“Oh!” you say, “melons and pumpkins are good to eat!” So they are, the better luck for us, that is. But all the plant wants of these big things, is to hold the precious seed.

An apple is a nice fleshy case to hold the seeds in the core. The cherry and plum are softer seed bags, which hold hard pits.

Did you ever look at a blackberry? You saw it was made up of little balls or knobs. Each of these soft, sweet knobs holds a tiny seed. A strawberry is quite different. The strawberry is a sweet red cone. Look, it is sprinkled all over with little yellow dots! Each of these dots is a seed.

I will tell you a little about the “why” of all this, in some other lesson.

You see the seed is that without which the plant cannot make a new plant. Without seeds there would soon be no more plants.

The leaves are those parts without which the plant cannot live and grow. But I think I hear some sharp child say, “How about those plants that have no leaves?”

In the few plants that have no leaves, the stem may help to serve in their place. But most of the few plants that have no leaves fasten upon other plants, and grow upon them. They use the leaves of those other plants to do their work.

In these simple lessons, I tell you of only common things. I speak of the things that you can see each day. For the rare things you must go to larger books.

You know from your last lessons that leaves are the stomach of the plant. Leaves are also the plant’s lungs.

Plants must breathe. They must breathe in and out, as you do. Also the plants must get rid of the water which they do not need after they have taken the food out of it. Much of this water passes out through the leaves.