THE ELM, OAK, AND NETTLE 145 
The third point-is also one that you can see for your- 
selves, and with less discomfort, and that is the nettle’s 
method of giving its pollen a good start in life. If you 
watch a nettle-bed in the early morning, at the time when 
the flowers are showing, you will notice that small clouds 
of dust spring from the clump when the sun’s rays first 
strike it, sometimes seven or eight little spurts all to- 
gether. This is the “assisted emigration” of the pollen. 
With only one sheltering ring, there would be an obvious 
danger that the pollen might get wet if the flower were 
open long after ripening, and the stamens have their 
pollen all ready and developed before the bud ever opens. 
If no sun comes, the four sepals —three was the key- 
number of the lilies and orchids; four and five are most 
common in this group—keep fast closed, the stamens 
coiled up within them, and their anthers shut. The sun 
comes, the bud flies opens with a snap, and at the 
same moment the stamens straighten themselves out, the 
anthers split, and the dust-like pollen is jerked into the 
air, and receives its fair chance of catching the wind and 
finding a ripe pistil-top ready for it. 
There are some foreign connections of the nettle which 
deserve a word or two of notice, all the more because 
their relationship is not quite obvious. Two of the 
sweetest fruits come from this group, the Mulberry and 
the Fig, but no one who only knew them on the table 
would expect them here. The fruit is formed in a curious 
way in the Mulberry. The tassel of separate pistils, each 
within its calyx, grows into one body, as the calyx round 
each seed grows pulpy and juicy—an attractive morsel to 
_ birds, and a rich soil for the seeds within if it drops and 
decays. The Fig is an even more extraordinary fruit, for 
the flower-stalk is deeply hollowed at the top into a cup, 
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