Minnesota Plant Life. 525 



essentially subordinated. Each and any may grow into an 

 independent plant. 



When embryos are young they often have special nursing 

 organs that do not characterize their maturer stages. Remark- 

 able structures of this sort are found in the embryos of nastur- 

 tiums, orchids, and madders, as well as in many others. They 

 may be compared physiologically with the embryonal organs 

 of birds and mammals. 



Care of the young. The instinct of maternity so character- 

 istic of the higher animals is not wanting among the higher 

 plants. The brown sea-weed, like a fish, ejects its eggs into 

 the sea, leaving them to be fecundated and to develop and shift 

 for themselves ; but higher plants have devised a multitude of 

 structures for the care, protection and suitable establishment of 

 their progeny. The industry and pugnacity of a hen with 

 chickens is well known. Her duckings, rufflings and scratch- 

 ings are to be interpreted as indications of her motherly instinct 

 to protect and nourish her young. Not otherwise in a plant 

 species, such as an apple, must the greenness of the fruit be 

 interpreted as a device for nourishing the young seeds by the 

 aid of sunlight, the sourness as a method of defending them 

 from attack, and the subsequent sweetness, flavor and aroma as 

 adaptations for securing their distribution through the agency 

 of animals. While ripening its seeds the lady's-slipper is 

 peculiarly poisonous to the touch. Many seeds contain deadly 

 poisons, making them secure from the attack of hungry animals 

 or birds. By thorns, secretions, warning colors, hard walls and 

 distributional contrivances such as burs, wings, bristles, and 

 pulp, seeds and fruits show the care lavished upon the young 

 of the plant species. The moss mother, with her green leaves 

 and root hairs collects and elaborates food for her progeny, the 

 capsule. The Russian thistle covered with fruits, breaks loose 

 from the soil and rolls over the prairie, scattering the seeds 

 along its path. Innumerable structural and physiological 

 adaptations have in view the one end of assisting the young, 

 and in their sphere of life plants, like animals, subordinate the 

 needs of the individual to the necessities of the species. Thus, 

 when germination has begun, female pine plants are altogether 

 consumed by the young plantlets in the seed. This protective 



