WHAt PLANTS DO FOE tfHElft YOUNG. 163 



necessary you should know, leaving you to 

 pursue the subject if you will in more formal 

 treatises. 



The pistil, after it has been fertilised and 

 arrived at maturity, is called the fruit. In 

 flowers like the buttercup, where there are 

 many carpels, the fruit consists of distinct 

 parts, each one-seeded little nuts in the meadow 

 buttercup, but many-seeded pods in the marsh- 

 marigold and the larkspur. Where the carpels 

 have combined into a single ovary, we get a 

 many-chambered fruit, as in the poppy, which 

 consists, when cut across, of ten seed-bearing 

 chambers. Most fruits are dry capsules or pods, 

 either single, as in the pea, the bean, the vetch, 

 and the laburnum ; or double, as in the wallflower 

 and shepherd* s-purse ; or many-chambered, as 

 in the lily, the wild hyacinth, the poppy, the 

 campion. As a rule the fruit consists of as 

 many carpels or as many chambers as the 

 unfertilised ovary. 



Fruits are often dispersed entire, and this is 

 especially true when they contain only one or 

 two seeds. In such instances they sometimes 

 fall on the ground direct, as is the case with 

 most nuts ; or else they have wings or para- 

 chutes which enable the wind to seize them, 

 and carry them to a distance, where they can 

 alight on unexhausted soil, far away from the 

 roots of the mother plant. Such fruits are 

 common among forest trees. The maples, for 

 example, have a double fruit, often called a 

 key, which the wind whirls away as soon as the 

 seeds are ready for dispersion (Figs. 37, 38, 39, 



