People sometimes gather the heads of large thistles before the seeds are ripe, pull out the pink part of the flowers, carefully pull off the prickly bracts, and hang the rest up to dry. The akenes do not then fall off, but the plumy part fluffs out and makes a pretty pompon with which the children’s hats can be trimmed. [Illustration] MILKWEEDS. Most of us like milkweeds. They are not so troublesome as the dandelions and thistles. They generally grow in waste places, along stone walls, or outside fences, where they do no harm to the crops but make the roadsides charming. Most kinds of milkweeds have a milky juice, as their name tells. It is thicker and stickier than the dandelion juice, and is very disagreeable if one gets it on his fingers. [Illustration] This, no doubt, is why the plant makes it that way. It does not wish us to get its juice on our fingers; it wishes us to let it alone. It also wishes animals to let it alone and not eat it; and most animals are not fond of it. This is not true, however, of certain caterpillars. Towards fall you will generally see the milkweed leaves covered with bright yellow and black caterpillars that certainly are lovely whether you think, so or not. If you take the largest of these caterpillars and put them in a box of earth with plenty of fresh milkweed leaves to eat as long as they want to eat (which will not be long), you will see what happens. Something happens, and you will do well to find out about it. [Illustration] Milkweeds have pretty, fragrant flowers that grow together, many in a bunch, but not close together into a solid head, like the little dandelion flowers. Each milkweed flower has its own little stem. Not all of the flowers in a bunch of milkweed go to seed. Generally only one or two from each bunch do. The rest are crowded out and wither and fall off, for the milkweed flower develops a very large seed pod that holds a great many seeds, and there is not room on the stem for many of these big pods. The flowers of our common milkweed are pink-purple in color, and the pods are fuzzy and irregular on the outside, and are shaped as you see in the picture. [Illustration] Inside they are lovely. The pod itself is as smooth and shiny as satin, and there is a bridge running lengthwise; to this grow the seeds—a great many in each pod. Each seed has a plume and looks very much like the thistle akene with its plume. But these seeds have no seed case, excepting the large pod in which they all lie together. They grow inside this case, which opens to let them escape. The milkweed seed looks so much like the thistle akene that you would have to examine it very carefully to discover the difference. The milkweed seeds are brown and round and flat, and each has a silky plume, with no stalk to the plume. The seeds lie packed closely together in the pod with their plumes unopened, but when they are ripe the pod splits open down one side and the plumes fluff out. [Illustration]