The Story-Book of the Fields 



which the germ is immersed. This amount 

 of flour makes up almost the whole of the 

 seed. This is the supplementary food, the 

 provision which will assist the cotyledons, 

 insufficient in themselves. This well-stored 

 granary that encloses the germ, this magazine 

 of food, is the perisperm. [Neither the 

 almond, nor the acorn, nor the pea, nor the 

 bean, nor any number of others, have any- 

 thing like it ; beneath the skin of the seed 

 there is the germ, and nothing else — nothing 

 at all. The reason for this difference is 

 easily seen. The almond, the acorn and the 

 bean, with their great cotyledons swollen 

 with nutritive food, have no need of a supple- 

 mentary ration ; their huge vegetable breasts 

 are enough for the food of the little plant. 

 But the chickweed and the ivy, with their 

 poor little cotyledons, need some help, which 

 they will find in the store of flour of the 

 perisperm. 



So, to satisfy the first needs of the young 

 plant, the seed may contain a double pro- 

 vision for food — the cotyledons and the peri- 

 sperm. All seeds contain the cotyledons, 

 but the perisperm is not found in all. There 

 is none in the seed of the almond, the oak, 

 the chestnut, the apricot, the bean or the 



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