FEBRUARY. 55 



The numlier of plants which produce seeds in vessels 

 which open is very great. It includes nearly all the family 

 to which the foxglove belongs, such as frogsmouth, 

 Veronica, etc., also such familiar plants as poppies, 

 mignonette, wallflower, chick weed, and countless others. 

 As the seeds ripen they drop all round the parent plant, 

 so that the struggle for bare life is most severe among 

 closely related individuals of the same species. Most plants 

 which do this are either annuals or biennials. As a rule 

 they have feeble powers of dispersion. Just imagine a 

 tradesman, say a grocer, with half a dozen sons, establish- 

 ing them all as grocers immediately round his own shop. 

 One of the lot might survive, or even two might succeed in 

 a fashion, but the majority would succumb. Yet a poppy 

 will drop 10,000 seeds round its dying stem, and if all 

 germinate there will necessarily be a very high death-rate 

 before the few survivors reach the flowering stage. 



Frequently plants with dry seed vessels are provided with 

 devices for scattering the seeds. Clematis and Anemone, 

 and many composites like thistles and dandelions, develop 

 some sort of feathery appendage either on the seeds or on 

 the fruit, and this serves to distribute them by the agency 

 of the wind. Others have their fruits or seeds flattened 

 out for the same purpose, such as the Norway maple, 

 honesty, and the New Zealand flax. Others, again, throw 

 away their seeds to some distance, a fact familiar to 

 the most unobservant in gorse and broom, whose pods 

 crack with a little report on still hot autumn days. 



Then there is the vast class of plants with succulent 

 fruits, which are so developed that they may be picked or 

 swallowed by birds and so distributed. Large fruits of this 

 kind are not swallowed, of course, but fruit growers know 

 that when a thrush or a blackbird is disturbed at the 

 morning's meal on the peaches or apricots it will sometimes 

 thrust its beak into a fruit and fly away to some sequestered 

 spot to pick the succulent part off the stone. Small fruits, 

 and especially berries, with several seeds in them, are 

 swallowed holus-bolus, and this accounts for the increase 

 of elderberries in the Town Belt, as well as of fuchsias, 



