38 
Figure 28 shows you a cherry blossom cut open. | 
Here you see plainly the single pin with a seedbox. 
This seedbox with its case is what grows into the 
cherry. The white flower leaves, and the pins with 
dust boxes, fall away. In the cherry flower the green 
cup also disappears, instead of making the best part of 
the fruit, as it does with the apple and the pear. And 
the upper part of the seedbox pin withers 
off; but the seedbox below grows juicy and 
ripe and red, at least its outer case does. 
By the end of June you take out the long 
ladder and place it against the cherry tree. 
Fic. 28 
Seating yourself on one of its upper rungs, 
you swallow the outside of the shining little ball we 
call the cherry, letting the stony seedbox inside drop 
down upon the ground, where all ripe seeds belong. 
The story of the plum and of the peach is almost the 
same as the story of the cherry. If you understand 
how the single seedbox of the cherry blossom turns 
into the cherry fruit, then you understand how the same 
thing happens with the single seedboxes of the plum 
and the peach blossom. 
You know that in the flowers of the pear and the apple 
there were several of these pins without dust boxes; and 
although these were joined below into a single seedbox, 
this had separate compartments for the many seeds. 
But the single seedboxes of the cherry, the plum, and 
the peach, have but one hollow. Usually in this hollow 
we find only one seed. So you see that these three 
fruits make a little group by themselves because of 
their great likeness to one another. 
