The little trees grow up to be exactly like their fathers and mothers (for they have fathers and mothers), which is something all living things must have. These are not the same kind of fathers, or mothers either, that a boy or girl has, exactly, but they are parents just the same. So far as the trees, flowers and plants are concerned we call the parents father and mother natures, which is a term used merely to keep you from confusing vegetable life fathers and mothers with the regular kind. In the vegetable kingdom you cannot always see these father and mother natures, which enable them to reproduce their kind of life, but everything in the vegetable and also in the animal kingdom has them. How Do Plants Reproduce Life? In the spring we put seeds into the ground and later on plants grow up where the seeds were planted, and later the flowers come. The seeds contain the baby plants, which come to life, and after bursting the covering of the seed, unfold and grow up into plants if placed in the ground, where they can obtain the proper amount of warmth and moisture to give them a start. Why Do Plants Have Seeds? To get at this subject in the best manner we must study first how plants produce seeds and what happens. The power in a plant to make another plant like it grow comes from the flower. Ordinarily we think of the flowers as beautiful to look at and delightful to smell, but the flowers do not grow for the mere purpose of being beautiful, but are for a more useful purpose--to develop a seed which, when planted, will produce another plant. The machinery for producing a perfect seed is in the flower or blossom. Every flower has a definite plan of construction. The leaves and colors vary, but the plan for a perfect flower is always there. The petals which are generally colored are called the _crown_. When you pluck off the petals you see a number of green leaves at the bottom where the petals were attached. These form what is called the _calyx_, and help to hold the petals in place. Inside the flower are little stems which grow to the petals. These are called _stamens_. Every one of these little stems is hollow, and if you split one open you will discover a _fine powder_. This powder is called _pollen_, and is the “father” nature of the plant. In the calyx, the part we had left after we plucked off the petals, is the “mother” nature of the plant. The main part of the mother nature is the stem of the flower called the _ovary_, and this is where the seeds grow. These seeds in the ovary, however, will not become perfect seeds unless some of the pollen from the “father” nature of the plant touches them and fertilizes them.