CHAPTER III 

 SEEDS AND HOW THEY GERMINATE 



SEEDS are the queerest babies in the world, for 

 they have been known to sleep for many years, then 

 wake up and grow just as though their plant- 

 mother had lived the year before. We want fresh 

 seeds for our gardens, for we are more sure nearly 

 all of them will grow, while stale or old seeds are 

 pretty sure to have a lot of "weak sisters" among 

 them, who either won't germinate at all, or make 

 long, lanky, spindly, good-for-nothing plants. 



It is the most interesting thing to see how Mother 

 Nature fashioned her different plant seeds ; some are 

 as round and fat as butter balls, others so thin you 

 would think a plant could never come from them, 

 others are so hard you cannot cut them with a knife, 

 while others are so small they are no larger than 

 grains of pepper; still others have a shell and a 

 skin, while others have wings to fly away to new 

 spots in the world, and still others have tiny downy 

 brushes attached to them. 



Every seed contains a root and a sprout, the root 



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