FRUITS AND SEEDS AND THEIR USES 



289 



(including the orange, lemon, and grapefruit), berries (cur- 

 rants, gooseberries, blueberries, cranberries, tomatoes, grapes, 

 etc.), and the false fruits 

 and compound fruits that 

 have already been men- 

 tioned. Many of the edible 

 fruits, as we have them 

 now, have been greatly en- 

 larged and improved by 

 breeding. 



The coats of a good many 



fruits (for example, those of 



, ,11 j -1 FIG. 169. The discharge of the 



the pea, the bean, and the seedfi of e cranes bill by the sudden 



morning glory) crack open opening of the fruit coat and the 



when they are ripe, and so curlin g of the P arts into which it: 



t1 ,, j r 11 splits. After Kerner. 



allow the seeds to fall or 



to be shaken out. Some fruit coats open in an explosive 



way so as to throw out the seeds, sometimes to a consider- 

 able distance. The common 

 touch-me-not of the gardens 

 (known also as " balsam ") 

 is an instance of this kind ; 

 others are the cranesbills 

 (Fig. 169), the violets, whose 

 seeds are pinched or squeezed 

 out by a contraction of the 

 divisions into which the fruit 

 coat splits, and the " squirt- 

 ing cucumber " (Fig. 170), 

 whose seeds, with the juicy 

 pulp surrounding them, are 

 squeezed out through an 

 FIG. 170. A branch of the squirt- opening in the end of the 



ing cucumber showing a fruit falling f . R t th ma j ority o f 



from its stalk and discharging its 



seeds. After Kerner. fruits do not Split when they 



