of 



Burr- or hook-covered seeds may become 

 attached to the backs of animals and thus be 

 transported afar. One day in Colorado I dis- 

 turbed a black bear in some willows more than a 

 mile from the woods; as he ran over a grassy 

 ridge three or four pine cones that had been 

 hooked and entangled in his hair went spinning 

 off. Seeds sometimes are internationally dis- 

 tributed by becoming attached by some sticky 

 substance pitch or dried mud to the legs 

 or feathers of birds. Cottonwood seed often has 

 a long ride, though generally a fruitless one, by 

 alighting in the hair of some animal. Sometimes 

 a cone or nut becomes wedged between the 

 hoofs of an animal and is carried about for days; 

 taken miles before it is dropped, it grows a lone 

 tree far from the nearest grove. 



Though the witch-hazel is no longer invested 

 with eerie charms, it still has its own peculiar 

 way of doing things. It chooses to bloom alone 

 in the autumn, just at the time its seeds are ripe 

 and scattering. Assisted by the frost and the 

 sun, it scatters its shotlike seeds with a series of 

 snappy little explosions which fling them twelve 



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