AUTUMN FRUITS 



seed-eating -animals, such as boring beetles, or 

 against larger creatures, such as birds and rodents, 

 which devour and digest the seeds. (3) Not less 

 important is the part the fruits play in seed-scatter- 

 ing, whether by explosion, or by fixing on to animals, 

 or by forming parachutes, or by being themselves 

 eaten. (4) But even when the seed has been 

 successfully scattered and sown it may require the 

 fruit's protection in the ground. It may riot be 

 ready to germinate, or the season for germination 

 may be many months ahead. The enclosing fruit, 

 or its innermost wall in many cases, may protect the 

 seed from the frost and from the appetite of many 

 small animals that work underground. 



Kinds of Fruits 



Let us think of the different kinds of fruits that 

 we know. First, there are the box-fruits, or capsules, 

 which are dry in texture and which open in some 

 way to let the seeds out. Poppy-heads and pea- 

 pods are good examples. Second, there are splitters, 

 also dry, but not liberating the seeds. They break 

 into pieces, each of which encloses a seed. This is 

 true of the fruits of the hemlock and all Umbellifers, 

 of mallows, of Labiates. It is enough to look into 

 the calyx of a ripe white dead nettle to see that 

 the fruit has neatly divided into four nutlet-like 

 pieces, each enclosing a single seed. Third, there are 

 nuts and nutlets (achenes), also dry and not liberating 

 the contained seed. In true nuts, such as those of 

 the hazel, there is a very hard fruit-wall, to which 

 the enclosed seed is not closely attached ; in the 



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