SUMMER FLOWERS 



adapted to different uses protective and steadying 

 leaves, protective and attractive leaves, pollen- 

 making leaves, and seed-making leaves. The differ- 

 ent parts all grow out of the flower-stalk as leaves 

 do, and they often go back to the leaf -like con- 

 dition for instance, when the plant is overfed. 

 A Canterbury bell may become a crowded green 

 tuft, and most " double " flowers are due to stamens 

 turning into petals. In the flower of the water-lily, 

 the substantial green sepals' pass quite gradually 

 into white petals, and these narrow into straps, 

 which pass into yellow stamens. In this flower and 

 others like it we find it difficult to tell where sepals 

 stop and petals begin, or where petals stop and 

 stamens begin. In such ways we may convince 

 ourselves that, though the four parts of the flower 

 have different names and forms and uses, they have, 

 fundamentally, a common nature, for they are all 

 leaves, transformed in various ways and combining 

 to fulfil the plant's chief end that it should produce 

 seeds which will develop into full-grown plants and 

 bear next year's flowers. 



There is a beautiful passage about the flower in 

 one of Ruskin's letters. " You will find," he said, 

 " that, in fact, all plants are composed of essentially 

 two parts the leaf and the root one loving the 

 light, the other darkness ; one liking to be clean, 

 the other to be dirty ; one liking to grow for the 

 most part up, the other for the most part down ; and 

 each having faculties and purposes of its own. 

 But the pure one which loves the light has, above 

 all things, the purpose of being married to another 



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