84 COLIN CLOUTS CALENDAR. 



seeds of all in the Fore Acre just at present are the 

 dandelion clocks ; and it is pleasant to sit in the sun 

 and watch the wind taking off one little feathery para- 

 chute after another from the head, till the smooth round 

 disc is left at last bald and naked. If we were not 

 so accustomed to dandelion clocks from our babyhood 

 upwards, they would certainly strike us as being very 

 curious and interesting objects indeed. 



If you pull a blossoming head of dandelion to pieces, 

 you see at once that it is not a single flower, as it appears 

 at first sight, but a whole collection of tiny separate 

 florets crowded together in a bunch on a circular disc or 

 cushion. Each floret stands complete in itself, with a 

 tubular yellow corolla, a set of wee slender stamens, 

 and a delicate two-lobed pistil in the centre, both lobes 

 being curled round gracefully like a ram's horn. It has 

 its own fruit, too : a small white object at the bottom, 

 looking exactly like a single seed, as it practically is. 

 In the daisy you get something of the same arrange- 

 ment ; only there the yellow florets of the central part 

 are bell-shaped, like miniature hyacinths or heath- 

 blossoms, and only the pink-tipped outer rays are split 

 down one side so as to make their corolla more like a 

 strap than a cup or bell. In the dandelion, on the other 

 hand, the same tendency has gone a little further, and 

 all the florets in the head have become strap-shaped 

 rays, so as to let various small insects get easily at the 

 drop of honey which each floret secretes in the nectary 

 at its base. The daisy is a comparatively exclusive 

 plant, which lays itself out mainly for distinguished 

 visitors ; the dandelion is a sort of common innkeeper, 

 which welcomes all comers equally without regard to 



