I io GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



berry (where it is double) or in the primrose. Here 

 the calyx is a mass of flossy hairs, and discharges, as 

 we shall see, a useful purpose in the after-glow of 

 dandelion life. Below, the little flower forms a tube, and 

 inside the tube are the seed-producing organs. The 

 pistil, wherein the seeds are matured, is that delicate 

 stalk you may perceive rising in the middle of the tube. 

 It is divided in two at its tip, and the ends curl over. 

 On these ends the pollen, or yellow fertilising dust you. 

 see so distinctly in larger flowers, will be placed, so 

 as to ripen and fructify the ovules into seeds. 



Stamens, too, for producing the pollen, the little 

 dandelion flower possesses, all united in a bunch 

 around the stalk of the pistil. So that 

 inside this apparently insignificant blos- 

 som, one of the hundred or two which 

 make up the dandelion-head, you find 

 all the parts of a perfect flower. Little 

 wonder that this race of plants flourishes 

 exceedingly and multiplies apace, when 

 24. you discover its colonial nature and its 



Dandelion Down. 



compound constitution. 



After the blossom comes the fruit, and the dandelion 

 pistils ripen in due season. The yellow leaves wither 

 away, because, having served as flags and ensigns 

 to the insect-hosts, which carry the pollen from one 

 flower to the other, their mission is past and over. 

 Seed-time in dandelion history is well-known. You 

 behold the head of flowers converted into a perfect ball 

 of downy hairs, and the children blow them off puff 

 by puff to calculate the time of day, in the exercise of 

 that popular folk-lore whereof childhood still retains 

 many examples. 



What has happened, then, to the dandelion-head as 



