the previous flower. This pollen falls 

 on the stigma and finally finds its way to 

 the seed. 



There are so many things to be learned 

 about flowers that there is no end to it 

 all, but by looking and guessing we can 

 find out a great deal. There are two 

 fine ways of making a beginning at sur- 

 prising some of the secrets of flowers. 

 The first is to make an herbarium, or 

 plant collection. If properly done and 

 cared for, this collection may become a 

 source of pleasure and information for 

 years. 



Begin early in the spring, for the early 

 flowers are more interesting, besides 

 being easier to press. You should have 

 a good trowel or knife to dig up the 

 plants, for each specimen must include 

 the root or a section of it. The press 

 consists of blotting paper with weights, 

 which may be books. But the delicate 

 plants should not have too much pres- 

 sure at first. Add to the weights from 

 day to day, changing the blotting paper 

 if it becomes damp, until the plants are 

 thoroughly dry. Then they must be 

 transferred to white sheets, of uniform 



size, and fixed to them with bits of stick- 

 ing plaster or a small amount of glue. 

 A written description of the plant with 

 its name, common and scientific, the lo- 

 cality in which it was found and the date 

 should be included with the specimen. 

 If you have board covers for your her- 

 barium you will find it much more satis- 

 factory in keeping it from year to year. 

 Another way of collecting plants is to 

 make a garden. Select a corner of the 

 yard that is unlikely to be disturbed and 

 call it your own. Every spring go to 

 the woods and bring back Jack-in-the- 

 pulpit, spring beauties, anemones, bluets 

 — ^^in fact, all the wild flowers you can 

 find, roots and all, and plant them in 

 your garden. If you plant them after 

 the sun has gone down, and water them 

 carefully, they will probably keep on 

 growing, as if they had not been dis- 

 turbed. Some of them will come up 

 again the next year, especially those 

 from bulbs and rootstocks. But even if 

 they should not bloom the second year 

 the experiment is worth trying, since in 

 the meantime you have found out a great 

 deal about their habits. 



PART VII, PLANTS THAT DO NOT FLOWER 



Here are cool mosses deep, 



And through the moss the ivies creep. 



— Tennyson. 



Plants that reproduce themselves by 

 means of seeds are perhaps the most 

 familiar to most people ; but many plants 

 have no flowers and consequently no 

 seeds, yet are reproduced year by year. 

 It is these we shall consider. 



Ferns have no flowers, yet are remark- 

 able for their beauty and variety. In the 

 forest reserves of the West in our own 

 country the ferns are as tall, or even 

 much taller, than the tallest men, and 

 in the tropics the tree ferns are as high 

 as forty feet. There they look like palm 

 trees, though in structure they are not 

 at all like palms. Ferns are often very 

 small, as small almost as the least of the 

 mosses. They are sometimes coarse, as 

 the common brake fern ; sometimes most 

 delicate, as the maiden hair. 



The leaves of the fern are as truly 

 leaves as those of the flowering plants. 



though they are usually called fronds. 

 But the early botanists thought one of 

 the uses to which fern leaves are put 

 so remarkable that they could not bear 

 to call them leaves. You have often 

 noticed, no doubt, on the back of fern 

 leaves, either along the margin in reg- 

 ular rows, or scattered all over the leaf, 

 brown spots. These spots are the spores. 

 They are usually protected in some way, 

 either enclosed in a case or covered by 

 a fold of the leaf itself. The maiden hair 

 turns back a tiny part of its leaf, while 

 the whole edge of Pteris, or the brake 

 fern, curls over to cover the spores. 



Spores are much simpler in structure 

 than seeds. A seed contains a complete 

 plant in miniatures, the embryo, while a 

 spore is a cell with no hint of the future 

 plant about it. When a spore falls on 

 the damp ground a small heart-shaped 



163 



