136 FIRST STUDIES IN PLANT LIFE 



that you rarely find among the flowers ? Purple is a 

 common colour among wild berries, but rare among 

 wild flowers. Black is rarely found as a flower-colour, 

 but is common among berries. The birds that 

 eat the berries seem to have different tastes in colour 

 from the bees that visit the flowers. Perhaps another 

 reason is that a good contrast is needed between the 

 berries and the leaves. If the berry of Virginia 

 creeper were red instead of dark-coloured, it could not 

 be seen against the red autumn leaves. And now we 

 pass to the seeds that are neither juicy nor coloured 

 but that are produced in great number. 



5. How small dry seeds are spread by birds. 



Perhaps you have never noticed the small hard seeds 

 that fall from ripe grasses and weeds. It is not easy 

 to see them among thick grass, but, now and then, on 

 a bare bit of ground you can see the seeds lying in 

 hundreds. You must look for these, for seeds often 

 have the colour of the ground they fall on. You know 

 how every bare patch in a field breaks into green after 

 the rains of autumn. This growth is from the seeds 

 that have escaped the birds. 



6. A large weed often grows many thousands of 

 seeds. It is said that a single plant of common 

 purslane — the thick, reddish-green weed that overruns 

 the garden-beds in summer, can produce 1,250,000 

 seeds in one season ! If every seed from one plant 

 grew into a plant, the whole world would soon be 

 overrun with this wonderful weed.* You see now what 

 keeps the birds busy in a field from morning to night ! 



*Tlie blackfellowB used to get fat on this seed. They would collect great 

 heaps of the weed and then shake out the seeds. 



