A WINTER WEED. 47 



starch from the carbonic acid of the air, which starch 

 is at once laid by in the root-stock to feed the young 

 flowers when they are ready to sprout. So the 

 moment a little warm weather arrives, the bud begins 

 to start into life, and is supplied with food from the 

 starch laid by in the root, as well as from the constant 

 gains of the ever-busy leaves. All annual plants 

 have to grow from the seed in a single season, and 

 they have to produce a large number of leaves before 

 they have digested food enough in these their ex- 

 panded stomachs to feed the future flowers and seed ; 

 so that they cannot begin blossoming till comparatively 

 late in the season. But the daisy, being a perennial, 

 with slightly starchy root and practically persistent 

 foliage, gets the start of them from the beginning, 

 so as to put forth its flowers at the earliest possible 

 moment. 



And now let me look briefly at this flower itself. It 

 is made up, as everybody knows, of two parts. The 

 centre, or disk, is yellow, while the outer rays are 

 white. But if one pulls it to pieces, one sees that the 

 disk is really composed of many separate little golden 

 bells, each one something like a harebell on a very 

 small scale. The daisy head, in fact, is not one 

 flower, but a whole lot of distinct flowers crowded 

 together into a single truss. Taking one of the little 

 central yellow bells in detail, I find that its petals are 

 not separate, as in the buttercup, but are all united 

 together into a long tube. The ancestors of the 

 daisy had doubtless ages ago five distinct petals, like 

 those of the buttercup; but at some time or other 



