124 OUR COMPOUND FLOWERS. 



It is possible that this alternate expansion and contraction of the 

 flowers, and their continued contraction in hazy or wet weather, may 

 be dependent on some structure of the receptacle or calycine leaflets 

 that gives them a hygrometric property, but the explanation is irre- 

 concileable with some similar, and not less remarkable, phenomena. 

 If the flower-stalk of the Dandelion is split longitudinally for two or 

 three inches with a knife, the halves recede quickly from each other 

 to a distance far beyond what any elasticity in the parts could produce ; 

 and, in a minute's space or so, each half, or often only one of them, 

 will have coiled itself up in one or two circling involutions. This fact 

 has been long familiar to our country lasses, who are wont to tear 

 the fistular stalks into shreds, that instantly twist themselves into a 

 series of whorls as close as the hair does under the curling-tongs ; 

 and then, untwining them a little with their fingers into graceful 

 ringlets, they dress the head with them in ambitious imitation of 

 maiden aunts. Wherefore, too, should the head of Apargia hispida 

 be cernuous in bud, erect in flower and in maturation of seed, while 

 the Goatsbeard and all the Hieracia are erect throughout the process 

 of florescence and semination ? In the bud, the flowers of the Colts- 

 foot are pendulous, erect when expanded and in vigour, when fading 

 they contract and close, and again hang the head as if they seemed 

 to grieve for their departed beauty ; but before long, the seeds being 

 matured and ready for dispersion, they rise once more erect, that the 

 breeze may waft the seeds with certainty to a soil fitted for their 

 germination in a future spring. The flower of the Dandelion, on the 

 contrary, is erect from its first appearance to its entire decay ; but 

 after the seeds have been fertilized, the calyx closes around them, 

 and so continues until they have ripened, when the scales become 

 very completely retroverted, so as fully to expose the feathered globe. 

 The stalks of this down contract closely together in moist and wet 

 weather, — a beautiful provision to secvire its dispersion only in a dry 

 day, when it is dri\en off by every zephyr, and not unoften by the 

 schoolboy, who thus endeavours to resolve his doubts as to the hour : 



" Dandelion with globe of down, 

 The school-boy's clock in every town, 

 Which the ti'uant puiFs amain 

 To conjiu-e lost hours back again." — W. Howitt, 



Thus the seeds are sent abroad on their stalked and wavering para- 

 chutes, and when at length they reach the ground, we find that the 

 seed must descend in the soil in one direction only, for it is armed 

 with prickles that, pointing all upwards, hinder their reverse burial, 

 and equally prevent their reascent to the surface*. There is no 

 forced theology in noting this small instance of prescient wisdom, — 

 but many of the preceding facts have been usually adduced as proofs 



* For other notable peculiarities in the flower of the Dandelion, see 

 Drummond's Letters to a Young Naturalist, p. 124-132, 2nd edit. Lond. 

 1832. — I may here observe that the florets of the ray in Pyrethrum 

 inodorum and the Chamomile hang down in damp weather, and after 

 maturity. In all others of their family they close or shut up. 



