Margaret Warner Morley

Seeds have other ways of going about besides being blown by the wind. One way is to fasten on to anything or anybody that passes and get carried to some other place.

burdocks

Burdocks do this. Burdocks grow in dooryards if they get a chance, and in fence corners and pastures and along roadsides, and in fact almost anywhere. They are sturdy weeds and often grow quite large. In “The Ugly Duckling,” Hans Andersen tells us about them.

“In a sunny spot stood a pleasant old farmhouse, circled all about with deep canals; and from the walls down to the water’s edge grew great burdocks, so high that under the tallest of them a little child might stand upright.”

Like the dandelions and Canada thistles, the burdocks came from Europe, and a great many people wish they had stayed at home. That is because of their burrs, which are a nuisance in the fall of the year.

Everybody knows what burrs are. They stick fast to the clothes of people and get on the tails and manes of horses, where they must cause a great deal of discomfort, and where it is a great deal of work to pick them out. They get upon the tails of cows, too, and the fleeces of sheep, and dogs get them on their ears. The reason is this: the burrs are full of seed pods. The burdock flower head is, like the dandelion, made up of a great many tiny flowers, and each flower has a close-fitting pod containing one seed, or an akene, as we have learned to call it.

The head of flowers is covered by stiff green bracts, and at the end of each bract is a hook. These hooks are soft when the flowers are in blossom, and they do not catch fast to things. But when the seeds ripen, the bracts grow hard and stiff, and so do the hooks at the end.

Now, when an animal or a person comes along and brushes against these ripe burrs, the strong hooks catch; the burr, full of ripe akenes, is pulled from the plant and is carried away. It is easy to guess why this happens.

When one tries to pull a ripe burr from the clothes, it falls all to pieces and the akenes spill out. Then each hook has to be pulled out separately, and very likely each one will prick the fingers.

Children sometimes pick the burrs before they are ripe, and stick them together to make baskets and other things. Then the burrs do not fall to pieces nor prick the fingers much. The burdock has a rank, disagreeable odor that clings to the fingers a long time after the burrs have been handled. It is not easy even to wash it off.

Children often pick ripe burrs and throw them at each other. Some think this is funny, and some think it is naughty.

Burdocks yield a valuable medicine; so they are useful as well as troublesome.

burdock burrs

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COCKLEBURS AND SAND SPURS.

Cockleburs are covered with hooks, too, but they are much uglier than burdocks, for their seed pods are very hard and are covered on the outside with stiff, strong hooks that prick like needles.

When one walks among cockleburs, he soon stops to pick them off, for they hurt so, he cannot bear it.

Sand spurs are even worse than cockleburs. They are the seed coverings to a kind of grass.

Cockleburs.

In Florida this grass grows in tufts and spreads out close to the ground. Some of its stalks are covered with sand spurs that, like the cockleburs, are hard and are covered, not with hooks, but with very hard spines. These spines stick out in all directions and readily fasten upon whomever or whatever comes along, when they leave the parent grass and are carried away. After a time they are picked off and thrown on the ground, or they fall off, and that is their way of traveling to find a place to grow.

Dogs often get them in their feet, and then they have a hard time picking them out, for of course the poor things cannot walk with sand spurs between their toes.

There was once a dog that hated sand spurs and loved people so much that when any one came near him with sand spurs on his clothes, he would at once begin to pick them off, and the expression with which he jerked them out of his mouth showed very plainly what he thought of sand spurs.

Sand spurs.

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TICK TREFOIL.

When walking in the woods in the late summer we sometimes find queer jointed little pods, like unfinished pea pods, clinging to our clothes.

tick trefoil

These come from plants that belong to the Pea family and are called Tick Trefoil. There are nearly two dozen kinds of them, and sometimes they seem to be everywhere in the woods and thickets.

The pods are like pea pods, only that they are jointed, and the joints break apart, so that each may be carried away separately. Each joint contains a little pealike seed.

The outside of the pod seems fuzzy, and it clings very closely to whatever it touches. If we look at the fuzz with a magnifying glass, we shall find it made up of innumerable little hooks.

The hairs that cover the pod are turned up at the end to form little hooks, very delicate, but able, when there are so many of them, to hold on very tightly.

They seem to snuggle down into the cloth they touch, so that it is difficult to pick them off, and the joints all separate when we try to remove them, so that each one has to be taken off separately.

Another plant whose seed pods are covered with hooked hairs is the sweet-scented bedstraw. This is a pretty little plant that spreads about on the ground. Its flowers are small and greenish, but the whole plant when in bloom has a pretty lace-like effect as we find it in the woods very often growing about fallen logs.

Sweet-scented bedstraw.

Its seed pods are small and, like the tick trefoil, are covered with hairs that, under the magnifying glass, are seen to be hooked.

The enchanter’s nightshade is another little plant whose seed pods are covered with hooked hair. It is as pretty as its name and is to be found in damp woods.

There is a tall leafy kind that grows sometimes two feet high and is topped with numerous branches of small white flowers. As the flower stem lengthens, the flowers continue to unfold at the tip, while lower down are the many little seed pods, shaped like little tennis racquets.

The prettiest enchanter’s nightshade, however, is a little fairy that sometimes grows on decaying logs. It is often not more than three or four inches high and ends in a branch of pretty little white flowers with bright red calyx lobes. After these dainty blossoms come the little hook-haired, racquet-shaped seed pods.

Look for enchanter’s nightshade the next time you go to the woods in the summer time. Below is a picture of the large one.

enchanter’s nightshade

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STICK-TIGHTS.

Stick-tights are troublesome to us, and we call them very disagreeable names, such as beggar ticks and beggar lice. But they are really not bad at all and are quite pretty. If they stick to us, that is our fault quite as much as theirs, for we should keep away from them if we are unwilling to carry them about.

They cling to whatever comes along, because that is their way of traveling about. They cannot walk or creep or crawl or jump; neither can they fly very far nor move in any other way, excepting as they are carried.

You know how they look—so Of course this little brown, flat object with horns is an akene. Inside it is a seed. The two horns at the top are able to fasten it quite tightly to a woolen dress or a sheep’s fleece. If you look carefully, you will see little hard teeth on the edge of the stick-tight that help it to cling. On one species of stick-tight these teeth point backward, like the barbs of a fishhook, and that kind sticks very tightly.

Stick-tight plant.

Stick-tight plants blossom in the summer time. The greenish-yellow flowers are clustered in heads like the dandelion flowers, and like those each stick-tight flower has an akene at the bottom. These akenes grow much larger than those of the dandelion, and they have the two horns on their heads.

The akenes stand on a flat cushion, just as the dandelion akenes do, but these do not wait for the wind to blow them away, though, if nothing comes along to pull them loose, they in time become very dry and fall out, and then the wind often carries the light little things some distance.

But their favorite method of traveling is by stagecoach, and if you happen along at the right time they will take you for their stagecoach, and let you carry them to a new place. Sometimes the plants grow so closely together that in passing through them one becomes quite covered with the little brown things, and it is a long and tiresome task to pick them out.

They, too, get on the tails and manes of horses, and the tails of cows, the coats of dogs, and the fleeces of sheep; but they are not nearly as troublesome to these creatures as are the burdocks.

There are several species of stick-tights, or beggar ticks, as they are more generally called.

Some have rather large flower heads, with the outer flowers each provided with a long, broad yellow petal. These are often called wild sunflowers, because they look something like a little sunflower.

There is a plant called Spanish needles, very closely related to the stick-tights, and that has four horns to its seed pod.

The burr marigold, which grows in wet places, and whose greenish flower heads are round like a marble, is also related to the stick-tights, and, like the Spanish needles, has four horns.

A great many plants have these little horned seed cases, and when you go about the country in the fall of the year you will be certain to make the acquaintance of some of them. The plants with horned seed pods wish their seeds to get out of the dense thickets in which they usually grow, and they do what they can to help them.

horned seed cases

AGRIMONY AND OTHER WEEDS.

In the fall of the year and towards the end of summer we find a great many weeds in the woods and along the roads, sending their seeds out into the world by means of stout hooks, or else hooked hairs or sharp spines.

The agrimony is one of these. It is a common, rather pretty plant with yellow flowers, and it has a burr or seed pod, armed with hooked prickles around the waist, so to speak.

After a walk in the country through woods and fields, in the autumn, one will be likely to find a number of little things clinging to one’s clothes. Instead of merely shaking or picking them off and throwing them away, carefully collect them, and when there is time look at them.

You will very likely find yourself decorated with a number of different kinds of seeds or seed pods, that vainly hoped in you to find a means of traveling to new and better places of growth.

All these little brown things are disappointed, or would be if they could feel disappointed. But you can profit by their misfortune, and, by carefully examining the little wanderers, can learn a great many interesting and wonderful truths about the plant world in its effort to scatter its seeds.

FLAX.

The flax is a very useful plant, for the fibers of its stems are long and strong, and are spun into thread and then woven into linen.

Besides this, the seeds are useful. They contain an oil which is pressed out and is known as linseed oil. It is used a great deal by painters in mixing their paints.

When flaxseeds are wet they become very sticky on the outside. A jelly-like substance covers them, and this it is which we drink in “flaxseed tea” to cure our colds.

You can easily see this jelly-like covering by putting a few flaxseeds in a few drops of water and leaving them there a little while.

You can readily see that when the flaxseeds are shed in the field and are met by the rain, they would stick to the feathers, feet, and beaks of birds that came to eat the seeds. If the birds flew to another place, as they often would, to clean their plumage, they would rub off the flaxseeds, that mean-time had become dry again, and often the seeds would drop off, as the bird moved about. In this way they would get planted in new places. No doubt the sticky covering to the wet seed also helps to anchor it to the ground and keep it from blowing away when once it has settled down on the earth.

The flax plant that we find so useful is not wild. It is carefully cultivated in many parts of the world and has been cultivated for so long a time, and in so many places, that nobody knows where it first came from. It is a pretty plant, that bears bright blue flowers.

Why do you not buy a penny’s worth of flaxseeds at the drug store and plant them in your garden and become acquainted with this very interesting and beautiful little plant?

MISTLETOE.

The mistletoe grows on trees. It has no roots of its own, but attaches itself to the bark of the tree and sucks out the sap.

Since it lives up in trees, its seeds must be able to find lodgment in these high places; and this the birds help them to do. The mistletoe has light green leaves; it grows in bunches and bears white berries.

The seeds in the berries are covered by a viscid substance, and when the birds eat the berries, some of these seeds will be apt to cling to them and be left on the branches of some other tree.

If the seeds happen to get swallowed, that does not hurt them, for they are not digested, but are passed out just as they were swallowed, and they then often fall upon the tree branches, where they can grow.

The English mistletoe very often grows upon the oak tree, and from very early times the plant was reverenced by the people, and particularly by the Druids, who used it in their religious observances. A survival of this old superstition about the mistletoe is found in its use to-day at Christmas time.

OTHER PLANTS WITH STICKY SEEDS OR SEED PODS.

Quite a number of plants prepare sticky coverings to their seeds or seed pods, in order to help the seeds get away.

The squirting cucumber is one of the most curious of these. It grows wild in southern Europe, but is sometimes seen in gardens in this country, not because of its beauty, but because it is so curious. It is a hairy plant and not at all pretty, but when its hairy cucumber-shaped seed pods are ripe something funny happens. The pod falls from the vine, and through the round hole left when it fell away from its stem, that which is inside the pod is shot out with violence. Out fly seeds and a quantity of sticky liquid. If a bird happens to be about when this happens, he will make haste to get far from such a queer-acting plant; and if he was shot by it, he will carry some of the sticky seeds with him; or he may get the seeds attached to him after they have been shot out.

You see the squirting cucumber has two ways of sending its seeds on their journey into the world. It shoots them some distance at the start and also provides them with a sticky covering, so that they may have a chance to get carried still farther.

Some plants have sticky hairs growing to their seed pods. We know that a good many plants have their pods covered with hairs which are hooked at the ends. Well, some are covered with hairs that have a drop of viscid substance at the tip, instead of a hook; these hairs fasten on quite as firmly as if they were hooked.

The pretty little twin flower, or ground vine, as it is sometimes called, has a pair of scales growing about its seed pod, and these scales are covered with sticky hairs.

The soft little mouse-ear chickweed, that grows everywhere in waste places, has several species which are covered all over with fine hairs which have a sticky tip. When the plant withers, it is easily pulled from the ground, and as it remains sticky, even after withering, the whole plant is often carried away by passing animals or people, and its seeds shed in some distant place.

See if you can find some plants that have their seeds carried because some part of the plant is sticky. There are not a great many of them; still, if you look long enough, you will be sure to find some.