378 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 



toward providing for the wants of the future. 

 The leaves drank in the summer sunshine, the roots 

 soaked up what summer rain the weather-gods 

 vouchsafed them, and the food thus gathered was 

 stored away in the root for future use. The bridal- 

 wreath and pyrus japonica shrubs were equally fore- 

 handed. In spring they were obliged to support 

 a showy and expensive family of flowers, which 

 needed for their maintenance all that the parent 

 bushes could scrape together. When flowering 

 time was over, however, the bushes began to 

 gather a store of gums and starches, to be laid by 

 till spring. All the trees and bushes have thus put 

 by a store of nourishment. They will need it all 

 next April, when the countless buds, studding the 

 branches, begin to swell under our eyes, and they 

 will need it still more in May, when young foliage 

 begins to expand and when baby-blossoms are 

 doing their growing. 



The buds which open, here and there, in the 

 autumn sunshine, are using capital which they 

 ought not to touch for five months to come. But 

 they can get only a small portion of this capital, 

 and hence they seldom expand very far, even if 

 mild weather continues. For the main stores of 

 gum and starch are securely locked up, as we shall 



