CHAPTER VI 

 THE FRUIT AND THE SEED 



The fruit, as the term is used in botany, is the mature 

 ovary with its contents and adherent parts; it may be 

 hard and dry, as in the wheat and bean, or soft and pulpy, 

 as in the apple and melon. But in common language the 

 term fruit is limited to the pulpy and juicy part of certain 

 plants that contains or supports the seed or seeds or that is 

 an after-development of the flower. To avoid explaining 

 botanical terms, we use the word in the latter sense. In 

 this sense, the fruit serves the plant by attracting animals 

 that can assist in disseminating the seed. 



The seed, as we have seen, is the fecundated and mature 

 ovule (144), and its normal office is reproduction (16). 



155. Development of fruit. — The fruit rarely develops 

 without fecundation of the germ cell of the ovule (149). 

 Varieties of the apple and pear have appeared, however, 

 in which the pulp develops without seeds. The fruit of 

 the banana is almost invariably seedless. The cucumber, 

 grape, orange and fig sometimes develop their fruit without 

 fecundation of the germ cell. These instances are all 

 exceptions to the general rule. 



156. Exhausting the plant. — Seed production exhausts 

 the plant far more than other plant processes. The seed 

 prepares little or no food, while it removes from other parts 



96 



