1 82 The Great World's Farm 



another way. For this tree bore eatable fruit without 

 being fertihzed, but though the dates might be eaten the 

 stones would not grow, for the seeds were imperfect, and 

 contained no germ. 



The fruit of a plant, botanically speaking, is the ripened 

 pistil, or rather that part of the pistil which contains the 

 ovules. Sometimes, as in the case of the various kinds 

 of corn, it is the ripened ovules, the seeds, which are the 

 eatable part of the fruit, the ovary in which they are con- 

 tained being a mere husk. In the various gourds, on the 

 other hand, the ovary itself grows enormously and be- 

 comes fleshy. So, too, with apples, pears, peaches, necta- 

 rines, plums, and oranges, the swollen, ripened ovary 

 containing the seed is the part best worth eating; and it 

 has, therefore, been the gardeners' object to increase its 

 size and improve its flavor. In the almond, the ovary 

 remains a mere wooly skin without edible flesh; in the 

 horse-chestnut it is a tough, thick, and prickly skin, 

 equally uneatable; in the filbert and beech-nut it is a hard 

 shell; and in the coconut it consists of fiber. Whether 

 husk, shell, skin, flesh, or fiber, however, the whole ovary 

 with the ripened ovules is properly the plant's fruit. 



Generally speaking, the growth of the ovary, as well as 

 of the ovule?, depends upon pollen, and when the ovules 

 are fertilized and begin to grow, the ovary begins to 

 develop also, and not until then. 



But it is not always so. Among the plants belonging 

 to the order of Liliaceae, which includes, besides liUes, 

 the hyacinth, tulip, garlic, onion, and others, it is a com- 

 mon thing for the ovary to begin growing actively before 

 the pollen-tubes have reached the ovules — before they are 

 fertilized, therefore — though not before the tubes have 



