Plants and their childrenParsons, Frances Theodora
General
Plants and their children
Parsons, Frances Theodora
Botany -- Juvenile literature; Plants -- Juvenile literature
That answer is a good one; but it is not just the answer that I wish.
Can you think of any other way in which we all benefit by the large
supply of baby food that is packed away in certain seeds?
If the right answer to this question does not occur to you, try to
remember which of those seeds we have been reading about have been
supplied with a specially large amount of this food.
You remember that the bean holds so much baby food in its seed leaves,
that these are very fat. So do the pea, the walnut, and the chestnut.
The seed of corn, also, is well filled with baby food, only in the corn
seed it is packed around the outside of the seed leaves, instead of the
inside.
But the squash, although it puts in its seed leaves enough food to keep
its young plant well and hearty, does not lay by any great quantity of
this material. Neither does the maple tree, which also stores the seed
leaves with food, but does not fill them nearly so full as do the bean
and the pea.
And the morning-glory, which packs its precious white jelly (this is
what the little morning-glory plant likes to eat) all about its young,
lays up only just enough of this to last until the baby plant breaks
out of its seed shell.
Now, what difference do we find between these seeds?—between the seeds
of squash, morning-glory, and maple, which have only a small supply
of baby food, and those other ones, such as bean and pea and corn and
walnut and chestnut, which are packed full of nourishment?
“Why, these last ones are good to eat!” you exclaim. “They are part of
the food we live upon, while the squash seeds, the morning-glory seeds,
and the maple seeds are not good to eat.”
Yes, that is the answer which I wished. The baby food in these seeds
makes “grown-up” food for us. We get strength and nourishment from the
same material which the mother plant has prepared for her young.
Now try to name the different seeds which help to make up our food.
Already we have mentioned several kinds. Besides these, there is the
oat seed (from which comes oatmeal), the wheat seed (from which comes
flour for our bread), the coffee seed, the buckwheat seed, the peanut
seed, the almond seed, and many others, some of which will come to your
mind from time to time.
I wish you would make for your teacher a list of all those that you can
recall; or, better still, I should like you to collect as many as you
possibly can, and bring them to your next class. If you cannot find the
seeds just as they grow upon the plant, you may be able to get them
prepared for use. A pinch of flour, for instance, would answer for
wheat seeds, of oatmeal for oat seeds.
I have in mind a number of seeds that you can easily secure, of which I
have not spoken; and it will be interesting at our next meeting to see
which child in this class is able to make the best exhibition of seed
food.
[Illustration: Decoration]
AN IMPATIENT PLANT BABY
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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