192 Blossom and Seed 



The food of blossom and fruit is, as has been said, 

 very generally accumulated in the leaves and stems of 

 the plant ; but sometimes the root serves as the main 

 storehouse. The turnip, for instance, Hke other 

 biennials, spends the first year of its Hfe in doing 

 nothing but gather a store of food by means of its roots 

 and its tuft of leaves. It does not shoot up, and it 

 makes no attempt to blossom ; and as the farmer does 

 not want turnip-blossom, and does want roots, he takes 

 the latter while they are plump, and well-filled with the 

 food intended for the seed. If he waited till the next 

 year he would see his turnip-plants shoot up rapidly 

 and blossom ; and very thriving they would look, no 

 doubt ; but all this time they would be sucking away at 

 the roots, which would be losing their plumpness, and 

 growing gradually hollower and more hollow, until, by 

 the end of the second year, they would be reduced to 

 nothing but fibre, and be quite useless. 



We have spoken already of bulbous plants, such as 

 crocuses, whose blossoms are nourished on the food 

 previously stored for them in the bulb, by the leaves, 

 which, in most cases, do the chief part of their work 

 after the blossoms have faded. But in some instances, 

 as in that of the colchicum, or meadow saffron, they 

 come up and make their preparations in the spring, 

 for the blossoms which do not appear till the autumn, 

 long after the leaves have vanished. In these cases 

 the food for the blossoms is stored in the bulbs; 

 and if a tidy gardener unwarily cuts off the leaves 

 before the bulb is properly stocked, he starves the 

 blossoms. 



But some plants take years to prepare food sufficient 

 for the supreme effort of their lives. 



