NATURE LORE 



parent stem almost as easily as are the quills from 

 the porcupine. Even while it is yet in bloom the 

 hooks will seize your coat-tails and the burr let go 

 its hold upon the stalk. The hooks are not attached 

 to the separate seeds, but are for the burrs as a 

 whole. 



I know of no plant so difficult to prevent seeding. 

 Cut it down in July, and in August it has new shoots 

 loaded with burrs; cut these off, and in late Sep- 

 tember, or early October, it will evolve burrs di- 

 rectly from the stub of the old stalk, often in clusters 

 and bunches, without a leaf to mother them. 



The plant if unhindered grows three or four feet 

 high and bears about five hundred burrs, which usu- 

 ally have twelve seeds each, or six thousand seeds 

 to the plant. Before the seeds are ripe they are 

 nearly the size and color of rye or peeled oats. Later 

 they shrink and turn dark. So far as I know, nothing 

 feeds upon them, save the larvae of some insect. I 

 have examined many burrs in October and found a 

 small white grub in a single seed in each of them. 

 Those good people who fancy that everythi,ng was 

 made for some special service to man, would have 

 trouble, I think, to find the uses of the burdock. 



The advantage of that array of eager hooks to 

 the burdock (there are more than two hundred of 

 them on each burr) seems obvious, and yet here is 

 the yellow dock alongside of it, a relative of our 

 buckwheat, that has no hooks or other devices that 



35 



