7 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



woods than when hanging from the branching tops of the slender, 

 wandlike plants. It is seldom that a complete pod is found, for the 

 deeply cut joints of the one-seeded lobes need only a gentle pull 

 to break them. The lobes have a raspy feel, and a pocket lens 

 shows their flat sides to be thickly covered with minute, curling 

 hairs, and few " stickers " are harder to pull off than those of the 

 desmodiums, since they cling closely by their whole surface to any 

 woolly substance. 



A group of " stickers " that frequently adorn the wanderer 

 through autumn woods are those of the bedstraw or cleavers of the 

 genus Galium. In some of the species the low, trailing stems and 



their leafy branches are rough- 

 ened with small, hooked bristles, 

 while in others, as in the common 

 cleavers, or robin-run-the-hedge, 

 the fruit also is thus armed and 

 adhesive. Circcea, the enchant- 

 er's nightshade, that grows so 

 abundantly in the depths of cool, 

 moist woods, contributes a large 

 share to the motley collection of 

 " stickers," its small, burlike fruit 

 being covered with tiny, hooked 

 prickles. So in the species of 

 comfrey, or hound's tongue, the 

 nutlets are rough-coated with an 

 armament of short barbs and 

 hooks that fasten themselves to 

 the wool and hair, and are very 

 troublesome to sheep that stray 

 into the copses along the pasture 

 side. The fruit of one species, 

 familiarly known as " beggar's 

 lice," is one of the most an- 

 noying pests of the woods, and Gray, at the end of his technical 

 description of the plant, calls it " a common and vile weed." 



Among the Compositce there are comparatively few plants which 

 effect their dispersal in this parasitelike way, most of the forms devel- 

 oping the characteristic downy structures known as pappus, like the 

 dandelion and the thistle, that float their seeds away on the wings of 

 the wind. Some species, however, like the bur-marigolds, have 

 fallen into the parasitic mode of dispersal, and these are mostly 

 plants of the low, tangled thickets along streams and in swampy 

 places. The many-flowered heads of the bur-marigold ripen in the 



S4.n1e.ie.. 



