THE ORIGIN OF FRUITS. 60 1 



bright sunshine, it will produce healthy green leaves, which help it to 

 flower and to carry on its other physiological actions without depend- 

 ing entirely upon its previous accumulations ; but if we place it in some 

 dark corner, away from the sun, though its leaves will be blanched and 

 sickly-looking, it will still have sufficient nutriment of its own to sup- 

 port it through the blossoming season without the external aid of fresh 

 sunshine. 



Where did this nutriment come from, however ? It was stored up, 

 in the case of the seed, by the mother-plant ; in the case of the bulb, by 

 the hyacinth itself. The materials produced in the leaves were trans- 

 ferred by the sap into the flower or the stem, and were there laid by in 

 safety till a need arose for their expenditure. All last year perhaps 

 for many years before the hyacinth-leaves were busily engaged in 

 assimilating nutritive matter from the air about them, none of which 

 the plant was then permitted to employ in the production of a blossom, 

 but all was prudently treasured up by the gardener's care in the swell- 

 ing bulb. This year, enough nourishment has been laid by to meet the 

 cost of flowering, and so our hyacinth is enabled to produce, through its 

 own resources, without further aid from the sun, its magnificent head 

 of bright-colored and heavily-scented purple bells. 



Each species of plant must, of course, solve for itself the problem, 

 during the course of its development, whether its energies will be best 

 employed by hoarding nutriment for its own future use in bulbs and 

 tubers, or by producing richly-endowed seeds which will give its offspring 

 a better chance of rooting themselves comfortably, and so surviving in 

 safety amid the ceaseless competition of rival species. The various 

 cereals, such as wheat, barley, rye, and oats, have found it most con- 

 venient to grow afresh with each season, and to supply their embryos 

 with an abundant store of food for their sustenance during the infant 

 stage of plant-life. Their example has been followed by peas and other 

 pulses, by the wide class of nuts, and by the majority of garden-fruits. 

 On the other hand, the onion and the tiger-lily store nutriment for them- 

 selves in the underground stem, surrounded by a mass of overlapping or 

 closely-wound leaves, which we call a bulb ; the iris and the crocus lay 

 by their stock of food in a woody or fleshy stalk ; the potato makes a 

 rich deposit of starch in its subterraneous branches or tubers ; the turnip, 

 carrot, radish, and beet, use their root as the storehouse for their hoard- 

 ed food-stuffs ; while the orchis produces each year a new tubercle by 

 the side of its existing root, and this second tubercle becomes in turn 

 the parent of the next year's flowering stem. Perhaps, however, the 

 common colchicum or meadow-saffron affords the most instructive in- 

 stance of all ; for during the summer it sends up green leaves alone, 

 which devote their entire time to the accumulation of food-stuffs in a 

 corm at their side ; and, when the autumn comes round, this corm 

 produces, not leaves, but a naked flower-stalk, which pushes its way 

 through the moist earth, and stands solitary before the October winds, 



