THE ROMANCE OF SEED-SOWING* 135 



attached to either the fruit or the seed. In the latter it may cover 

 only a part of the surface, or it may entirely envelop the seed. 



A tuft of hairs developed from the seed is usually called a 

 coma, from a Latin word signifying 'hair.' As one example of 

 such seeds, we may select Willow-herb, whose rosy flowers fringe 

 our river-banks and ditches— plants almost always found in wet or 

 marshy districts. Each seed is tufted with silky hairs, and the 

 opening pod, containing several of these, is a very beautiful 

 object. We are all familiar with the cotton-like hairs that show 

 the presence of the seeds on the numerous kinds of Willow trees 

 in early Spring or Summer. Here the seed nestles amid an almost 

 perfect envelope of hairs. The Asclepias, or American Milkweed, 

 has seeds tufted at one end, like those of our own Willow-herb. 

 The cotton of commerce consists of long, hair-like cells from the 

 seeds of Gossypmm, the Cotton-plant, one of the Malvacece, or 

 Mallow Order. Each thread is really a cylindrical cell, often very 

 long, which, when dried, flattens out and twists spirally. By this 

 pecuUar outline, cotton can always be detected under the 

 microscope. 



A\'hen the hairs form a tuft on the fruit, we speak of them 

 collectively as d, pappus, from a classical word signifying 'an old 

 man,' in allusion to the grey colour. 



The ripe carpels or fruits of Pasque-flower Anemone and 

 of wild Clematis are furnished with a feathery tail, which is in 

 reality the long style covered with silky hairs. The long, 

 feathered, graceful fruits of Clematis festoon our hedges in 

 Autumn, and are known popularly as Old-Man's Beard or 

 Traveller's Joy, and are among the most lovely of our country 

 sights. In the Red Valerian of our gardens, now wild in many 

 places, the calyx unrolls, after flowering, in the shape of a feathery 

 cap for the fruit, which can thus be easily carried about by the 

 wind. If you examine a single fruit from the thick, dark-brown 

 spike of Reed-mace or Bulrush {Typha), you will see that 

 it ends below in a very delicate stalk, around which, at three or 

 four different places, arise a series of circles of fine silvery hairs, 

 which support the tiny fruit in the air. The softness of the spike 

 is due to the presence of multitudes of fruits, each provided with 

 these hair circles. 



