136 THE ROMANCE OF SEED-SOWING. 



The Cotton-grass of our moors is another example. It is not 

 a true Grass at all, but is the genus Eriophorum, belonging to 

 the Cyperacece, or Sedges. Its fruits have a tuft of long, silky hairs 

 springing from the base, and we often see a marshy landscape 

 white with thousands of these hair-covered fruits. You must not 

 confound this with the Cotton-plant above named. 



The pappus, as an air-floating device, however, reaches the 

 climax of beauty and adaptation in the CompositcB, the Order 

 including Thistle, Dandelion, and very many other plants. 

 Examine a head of Dandelion early in its history, and you see 

 nothing of zx\y pappus ; but look at it later on, and you will see 

 in the place of the many florets that made up the so-called 

 ' flower,' a spherical collection of beautiful hairs, which form the 

 ' clock ' of the children. Each single fruit is prolonged above 

 into a long stalk or beak (very much longer than the fruit itself), 

 at the top of which is a close-set circle of delicate hairs arranged 

 laterally, so as to form a kind of parachute, concave above. This 

 parachute bears up the fruit and acts as a sail for it, and, being 

 by far the lighter end of the whole, causes the fruit to fldl to the 

 ground in the best position for its burial — namely, with the fruit 

 itself downward. Most assuredly, this wonderful contrivance for 

 dispersing the seeds is the reason why Dandelion is as common as 

 it is. " A common weed !" we say. Exactly ; and it is a common 

 weed because it is a highly-adapted type, as Grant Allen tells us. 



In the Hawkweeds — relations of Dandelion — \.h.Q pappus is not 

 raised on a beak, but is close down on the fruit, and is not so 

 widely expanded, being more funnel-shaped. In Dandelion and 

 Hawk weed the hairs are simple ; but in the Thrincia of our lawns 

 (which some people will call Dandelion, but which is only a near 

 relative), they are every one feathered. This is carried to the 

 furthest point in Tragopogon, or Goat's-beard, called ' John Go- 

 to-bed-at-noon ' by country folk, because it closes at mid-day. 

 Here the hairs are not only feathery, but the feathery branches 

 interlace all round the circle, so as to form a very powerful pro- 

 peller under the influence of a breeze. 



All these contrivances, whether found on fruit or seed, are 

 evidently developed by natural selection, in order to the better 

 dispersion of the life-containing germ. 



