“The little pointed nipple (r) is called a radicle. It is the part that, if allowed to grow, would push down into the earth, send out branches there, and become the root. At the point marked g is a compact bunch of tiny leaves, all white, forming a kind of bud, but one that is much feebler and more delicate than buds that grow on branches. It is called a gemmule. This bud will unfold and send forth the first leaves. Finally, the narrow line of demarcation between the radicle and the gemmule is called the tigella, and from it the trunk of the tree will take its start. Such is the almond-tree in its seed. The large tree that will send out a mass of branches and foliage into the air and thrust powerful roots into the ground is now contained in an insignificant corpuscle just large enough to be seen.” CHAPTER XXVIII THE SEED’S FOOD-SUPPLY “When it has leaves and roots that are sufficiently developed, the little almond-tree will nourish itself by drawing what it needs from the earth and air. But until then it must live, it must grow stronger, and it must increase a little in size. As nothing can come from nothing, the germinating seed must find somewhere the material for its first growth. This cannot be in the soil so long as the radicle is nothing but a point, incapable of any work; neither can it be in the air so long as the little leaf-bud has not unfolded and developed into foliage. The seed, then, must have a certain supply of nutriment stored up within itself. Let us turn our attention to this prepared stock of food. “In the almond we have studied the gemmule or leaf-bud, the radicle, and the tigella; but there still remain two large pieces, easily separable from each other, and constituting by themselves alone almost the entire bulk of the seed. These two pieces are the plant’s first pair of leaves, but leaves of a peculiar structure, being very thick, fleshy, and relatively enormous in size. They are the alimentary reservoirs, the storehouses of food from which in its beginning the young plant must draw its sustenance. When germination begins, these two large leaves, swollen with nutritive matter, yield little by little a part of their substance to the tiny plant and suckle it, as it were. They might therefore be called vegetable udders, nursing-leaves, but science calls them cotyledons. The unhatched chick in its shell has the yolk of the egg to furnish substance for its growth, the young lamb has its mother’s milk, the germ of the plant has the juice of the cotyledons.