6/6 



Handbook of Nature-Study 



^- ..-iCV-- 



-. /,-;. ^^r/i?A',-. - 



ff*f ! r' >: ' ' 



"When the frost is on the pnnkin and the fodder's in the shock." 

 Photo by Verne Moiton. 



quite worthy support for so beautiful a leaf. And, during our childhood, 

 it was also highly esteemed as a trombone, for it added great richness of 

 quality to our orchestral performances, balancing the shrillness of the 

 basswood whistle and the sharp buzzing of the dandelion-stem pipe. 



Growing from a point nearly opposite a leaf, may be seen the pumpkin's 

 elaborate tendril. It has a stalk like that of the leaf, but instead of the 

 leaf blade it seems to have the three to five naked ribs curled in long, small 

 coils very even and exact. Perhaps, at some period in the past, the 

 pumpkin vines lifted themselves by clinging to trees, as do the gourd vines 

 of to-day. But the pumpkin was cultivated in fields with the maize by 

 the North American Indians, long before the Pilgrim Fathers came to 

 America, to make its fruit into pies. Since the pumpkin cannot sustain 

 itself in our Northern climate without the help of man, it was evidently a 

 native of a warmer land; and, by growing for so long a time as a com- 

 panion of the corn, it has learned to send its long stems out for many feet, 

 resting entirely upon the ground. But, like a conservative, elderly 

 maiden lady, it still wears corkscrew curls in memory of a fashion, long 

 since obsolete. Occasionally, we see the pumpkin vines at the edge of the 

 field pushing out and clambering over stone piles, and often attempting to 

 climb the rail fences, as if there still remained within them the old instinct 

 to climb. 



But though its foliage is beautiful, the glory of the pumpkin is its 

 vivid yellow blossom and, later, its orange fruit. When the blossom first 

 starts on its career as a bud, it is enfolded in a bristly, ribbed calyx with 

 five stiff, narrow lobes, which close up protectingly about the green, cone- 

 shaped bud, a rib of the cone appearing between each two lobes of the 



