486 



HUTCHINSON'S POPULAR BOTANY 



FIG. 603. EVERGREEN 



CANDYTUFT (Iberis 



sempervirens). 



A silicula. 



as the seed of the plum matures, the fleshy meso- 

 carp, or sarcocarp, becomes more succulent and loses 

 its acidity, while the green epicarp, hitherto only to 

 be distinguished with difficulty from the surround- 

 ing leaves, assumes a yellow, red, or purple colour, 

 and so becomes very conspicuous. By reason of these 

 changes, animals particularly birds are attracted to 

 the fruits, which they devour greedily. The seeds, 

 thanks to their environment of stony endocarp, resist 

 digestion, and in many cases are transported to great 

 distances. The cherry, apricot, peach, and a host of 

 other drupaceous fruits undergo very similar trans- 

 formations and are distributed by similar means. 



The fruit of the Coco-nut Palm (Cocos nucifera), 

 with its fibrous mesocarp, is also a drupe, though 

 some botanists speak of it as a nut. This is one of 

 the fruits disseminated by water a fact which ac- 

 counts for the prevalence of palm-groves on the coral islands of the Pacific. 

 In the vicinity of Key West, an island of the Florida reefs, and as far 

 north as Jupiter Inlet, two hundred miles from Key West, the sandy beach 

 is lined with Coco-nut Palms, which owe their presence there to the 

 wrecking of a vessel which had a cargo of the nuts on board. The Double 

 or Sea Coco-nut (Lodoicea tseychdlarum, fig. 606) is distributed by similar 

 means. " The Seychelles," says Miss Gordon Gumming in her T^uo Happy 

 Years in Ceylon, " contribute a fine specimen of their own particular Palm, 

 the Coco-de-mer [Sea Coco-nut], which was so long 

 known only by the great double nuts (shaped like 

 a kidney when cut open) which tidal currents 

 floated far out on the Indian Ocean and to the 

 shores of the Maldive Islands, where they were 

 occasionally picked up by sailors and brought 

 home to puzzle botanists. It was not till last 

 [i.e., the eighteenth] century that the parent Palm 

 was discovered in the Seychelles, and it was found 

 that the Palm, with a fruit like twin coco-nuts, 

 bears a crown of huge fan-shaped leaves, akin to 

 those of the Palmyra Palm, crowning a stem a 

 hundred feet high." 



Another common form of indehiscent fruit is 

 the berry. In a berry the whole of the seed-case 

 or pericarp becomes fleshy or succulent there is 

 no stony endocarp as in the drupe. The grape, 

 currant, gooseberry, and mistletoe are well-known 

 examples. The gourd is really a huge berry 



FIG. 604. BURWEED (Xan- 

 thiurn strumarium). 

 With hook-clad involucre. 



