I

THERE ARE ANNUALS, BIENNIALS, AND PERENNIALS

BUT November was not all brown and dry. The warm days lingered. The lawn kept green, and suddenly about the house there was the most wonderful glory of yellow and rose and white and crimson, for the radiant flower of autumn, the chrysanthemum, was in full bloom. How beautiful the flowers were when the sun was bright, and when it was cloudy they seemed to have kept some of the sunlight and cheer to make the dooryard glad.

"I don't remember when you planted the chrysanthemums," said Prue, one bright morning to the Chief Gardener.

"No, it was when you were a very little girl—about four years ago."

"I remember," said Davy. "I helped you."

"Why don't you have to plant them every year?" asked Prue.

"Because they are perennials—they live on, year after year."

Prue did not seem to understand very well, so the Chief Gardener explained.

"There are three kinds of plants," he said: "Annuals, biennials, and perennials. The annuals live but one season. They come from the seed each spring, and when they have grown and bloomed and made seed for another year they die. Sweet-pease and sunflowers and Davy's corn are annuals."

"And radishes and beets," said Davy.

"No, Davy. That is where you are mistaken."

"But we have to plant them every spring," said Davy.

"We do so to get good vegetables for our table. But if we were planting only for seed we would leave the roots in the ground, or take them up and reset them in the spring. Then they would send up long stalks to bloom and bear seed. Beets and radishes and turnips and most such things are biennials, which means that they bloom the second year and then die. They spend all the first year in laying up strength in the roots, to use in making seed the second summer. Some biennials, like the cabbage, lay up this strength in the thick stalk. The strength which they take up from the earth and from the air, through their leaves, they do not spend in flowers and show, but turn it into food for themselves, and the food is so good that men gather it for their own use."

"I don't think that is quite right," said Prue, "after the poor thing has worked so hard all summer to be ready to bloom next year, for us to take it and eat it."

The Chief Gardener smiled and shook his head.

"I'm afraid we do not think much about the plant's rights," he said, "unless they happen to be the same as our own. And after all there are plenty of seeds saved every year—more than are ever planted."

"And are potatoes biennials, too?" asked Davy.

"No, potatoes are perennials. In the right climate they would live on year after year, laying up new strength each year for the next season's growth. Dahlias are perennials, too, and most of the grasses, and, of course, all trees, and shrubs. Your pinks, Prue, and sweet-williams, and the hollyhocks, are perennial, and live through the winter, though they bear a great deal of seed, which shows how determined they are to live on. These chrysanthemums also bear seed, and most plants have at least two ways, and some as many as four ways of producing others like them. Your onions, Davy, can be produced in four different ways. They can be grown from seed, from sets—which are little seed-onions taken out of the ground and kept through the winter—from bulblets—which are the little onions you saw growing on the top of the stalk last summer—and from multipliers—which are large bulbs broken into several small parts."

"I should think an onion was surely perennial enough," said Davy, "with four ways of keeping alive."

"Can you name the three kinds of plants now?" asked the Chief Gardener, turning to little Prue.

"Yes," said Prue, putting out three fingers. "Annuals that have to die every fall, like my sweet-pease. Bi-yennials, that have to die every other fall, like Davy's turnips. Only we don't let 'em die—we kill 'em and eat 'em just when they are ready for their best time. Perennials, that have a lot of ways to live and never die at all."

The Chief Gardener laughed.

"Well, that's pretty good for a little girl. I think we might almost make a poem out of it.

"I've made a rhyme, too," said Prue. "It's about the kinds of plants in a different way. This is it:

"Why, I think we shall have to make up some more," said the Chief Gardener. "It will help us to remember."

II

PLANTS KNOW HOW TO SPREAD

It was not many days after this that the Chief Gardener was digging among his vines, and he called to the children, who came running.

"We were talking the other day," he said, "about the many ways that old plants have of making new ones. See how this black raspberry vine is spreading."

The Chief Gardener pointed to a long branch that had bent over until the end touched the earth. This end had taken root, and now a new little plant was there all formed and ready to grow the coming year.

"There is another just like it," said Davy, "and another—why, there are lots of them!"

"Yes, the vine sends out many of those long slender branches with a heavy little bud at the end of each to weigh it down. Such branches are called stolons, and when the bud touches the earth it sends out roots. Strawberries have runners which do the same thing. You will find plenty of them if you look in the patch."

Davy and Prue went over to the strawberries and found that the vines, now red and brown from frost, had sent out runners, and made little new plants, like the black raspberries.

"You see," said the Chief Gardener, "we pick the berries, which are the seeds, so all berry vines must have some other way of spreading. The red raspberries do it in a different way. They send out runners, too, but they are from the roots, and when the sprouts come up, we call them suckers. Many kinds of plants have suckers, and there are some kinds of trees sprout so badly that they cannot be used for shade."

"What a lot of ways there are for plants to start!" said Davy.

"Suppose we try to think of as many as we can," said the Chief Gardener. "You begin, Prue."

"Seeds and roots and bend-overs and stuck-ins," said Prue. "That's four."

Davy and the Chief Gardener laughed.

"Well, that is a good start, but there are a good many kinds of roots and 'bend-overs,' and what are 'stuck-ins?'"

"Why, pieces stuck in the ground to grow. Mamma does it with her geraniums."

"Oh, slips! I see. Why, Prue, your answer covers about everything, after all. Now, Davy, suppose we hear from you."

"Well, seeds—that's one. Bulbs, all the kinds, like the three onion kinds, and maybe other kinds, roots like the red raspberries, that make suckers and other kinds of roots, like potatoes, and then all the runners and suckers that Prue calls 'bend-overs,' and slips and grafts and buds."

"Stuck-ins," nodded the Chief Gardener. "Prue was about right after all, for there are so many kinds of each different thing, and so many ways, that I am afraid we should never remember all the kinds and ways. 'Seeds and roots and bend-overs and stuck-ins' take in about all of them, and we are not apt to forget it. If you'll come now, we'll look at some of the kinds of roots."

They went down into the garden, and the Chief Gardener opened a hill of potatoes which had not been dug. Then he picked up one of the potatoes and showed it to Davy and Prue.

"That kind of a root is called a tuber," he said. "Those little spots on it are eyes, and make the sprouts. You remember we cut the potatoes we planted into little pieces, with one eye on each."

"I remember," said Prue, "and I asked if they had eyes so they could see which way to grow."

"The pieces we planted sprouted, and kept the sprout growing until it could send out roots. Besides the roots, there were little underground branches, and a potato formed on the end of each branch. When the soil and the season are both good there will be a great many of these branches and new tubers, but when the soil is poor and the season bad there will be very little besides roots."

The children followed the Chief Gardener, and dug up a bunch of thick dahlia roots, and he told them how these were really roots, and not tubers, like the potatoes. Then he dug up some sweet-flag, and they saw how the rough root-pieces were joined one to the other, in a sort of chain of roots, and these he told them were root-stalks, and that they kept a store of nourishment for the new plants, in the spring.

"There is a grass," he said, "which has such a root, and every time it is cut it sends up a new plant, so that every time the farmer tries to get it out of his grain-field he only makes more plants, unless he pulls up every piece and destroys it. You see, that grass has to fight to live, and it makes one of the very best fights of any plant I know, except the Canada thistle, which does very much the same thing. And that is what all plant life is. It is the struggle to live and grow and spread. The struggle with men and animals and heat and cold and with other plants. And in the struggle the plants, and especially the weeds, which have to fight hardest, have grown strong and persevering, and have learned a thousand ways to multiply their roots and to scatter their seed."

III

ALL THANKS FOR THE PLANTS

Thanksgiving brought the usual good dinner, and upon the table and the sideboard there were many things to remind the little family of their garden and their summer-time. There was a large plate of red apples and a dish of nuts, and there was a pot of pinks, which Prue had saved for her window-garden. Then there was a fine little jar of pickles, made from Davy's tomatoes, besides dishes of tomatoes and turnips, all from the little garden that had come and gone, leaving these good things and many pleasant memories behind.

And after the dinner was over, and the pudding eaten and the nuts passed, the little family sat around the table to talk, as they often did.

"I am sure we have a great deal to be thankful for this year," said big Prue. "Two such nice healthy children, with plenty to eat and wear, and a fire to keep us warm, and a good roof over our heads."

"And all from the plants," said the Chief Gardener. "If we are thankful for the plants, we are thankful for almost everything we have."

Davy sat thinking silently about this, but little Prue did not quite understand.

"I suppose you mean that the plants made us healthy to work in them," she said.

"I mean that, and I mean a great many other things. In the first place, plants furnish all the food in the world. Not only the vegetables, but the animal-food. Our turkey would not have been here to-day if he had not been fed on grain, and even the oysters must live from a sort of plant-food in the sea. Every creature that walks or flies or swims lives either on plants themselves or from some creature that does live on them."

"Do sharks live on plants, too?" asked Prue.

"Of course!" said Davy. "Sharks eat men, and men eat plants."

"I don't suppose sharks live altogether on men," laughed big Prue, "and the little fish they eat may live on other little fish, but if you go far enough you will find that somewhere the beginning is plant-life."

"Plants also warm and light us," went on the Chief Gardener. "Every stick of wood, or bit of coal, or drop of oil we burn, comes from plant-life. The coal was vegetation long ago—very long ago—and the heat and light that come from it were stored there in that far-away time by the green leaves that drew in life and light from the sunbeams."

"Do the leaves really take up light?" asked Davy.

"They really do. With every particle of vegetable matter that is made, a portion of the sun's heat and light is laid up in it. The light is still in the coal, though it looks so black. We have only to burn it, to get back the sunlight."

That was a very wonderful thought to the children, and they had to talk about it a great deal before the Chief Gardener went on.

"Every bit of clothing we wear comes from the plants," he said at last. "The cotton grows like the down about the thistle seed, and the wool that grows on the sheep's back is there because the sheep feeds on the green grass in summer and upon hay and grain in the winter-time. Silk is made by worms from mulberry leaves, linen is from the flax plant, and leather from the cattle that grow in the same way that the sheep grows.

"Then there is our house. A great deal of it is made from wood, and even the bricks have vegetable matter in them, while the stones are shaped by tools that have wooden handles, and the bricks and stones are hauled in wooden carts."

"But the iron doesn't grow, Papa," said little Prue.

"No, but without heat to forge it—heat that comes from wood and coal—it would be of no use."

"But there is one other thing that is more to us than all the rest. Plants purify the air we breathe. Air that we have breathed once is not fit for us again. We have used the oxygen from it, and turned it into carbonic acid gas. But carbonic acid gas is just what the plants need, so they take our breathed air and turn it into oxygen again and give it back to us fresh and pure, so that we can keep our life and health."

"Don't forget the flowers, Papa," said little Prue.

"I haven't forgotten them. If it were not for the flowers many of the plants would die out, and besides being so useful, the flowers feed the bees and make the world beautiful, and our lives happier and sweeter, by filling them with color and perfume and loveliness. No, I could hardly forget the flowers, Prue. They are the crowning glory of the plants that feed and clothe and warm and shelter us. So let us be thankful for the plants, every part of them, and especially for the flowers."

"We ought to be thankful for the sun that makes them grow, too," said Davy.

"And we must not forget the One to whom all thanks are due," added his mother.

And as the November day closed in they gathered around the big open fire, and were happy and cheerful in the blaze of the same sunbeams that had shone on the great forests which had perished so many ages ago.