66 



FAMILIAR LESSOJ^^S liT BOTAi^-y. 



without a stipe or stem, it is said to be sessile. If the hairs 

 are without branches they are swiple, if other hairs are ar- 

 ranged on the primary ones they are 

 plumose. Pine and maple have a scale- 

 like appendage called a wing (Fig. 114). 



163. The seed of the cotton plant is 

 entirely covered with long hairs called 

 coma. Willow and poplar are also cov- 

 ered with coma, but it differs from that of 

 the cotton plant in being short and brittle. 

 164. These appendages are not placed upon seed acci- 

 dentally or for no obvious use — far from it. These wings, 



Fig. 114. 



Fig. 115. — Cojia of Cotton Plant. 



Fig. 116.— Coma op Cotton Tree. 



plumes, trains, coma, scales, and aigrets, are so many 

 balloons, ships, carriages, or expresses, for the safe trans- 

 portation of seed through the air, down the rivers, over 

 the mountains, and across oceans, dispersing vegetation 

 over the face of the earth. Have you not often seen our 

 rivers white with the soft down of the cottonwood seed, and 

 in a few weeks after beheld a barren sandbar or a " new 

 bank" come out in a dress of green verdure that rivaled 

 in beauty and freshness the grassy prairies of the upper 

 table-land ? Well, in a few years you may find those 

 same spots groves of stately cotton-trees ! Those sandbars 

 would never liave received their garments of green without 

 the friendly office of these traveling seeds. Well, what you 

 have seen one kind of winged seed doing for one spot, is 

 what the myriad seeds are doing for the whole globe, caus- 

 ing the barren places to rejoice and the desert to bloom 



163. What is the appendage of the cotton seed called ? 



1 64. Are these things accidental ? What are their uses ? 



