The American Botanist 
VOL. XI, JOLIET, ILL., NOVEMBER, 1906. No. 3 
WINGED SEEDS. 
BY WILLARD N. CLUTE. 
XT ATURE has adopted many ways for distributing and 
^ ^ planting her seeds. There are seeds cunningly hidden in 
a juicy pulp to beguile the birds to distribute them ; there are 
seeds with artfully contrived hooks and barbs designed to 
hook into the clothing of mammals and thus be transported 
to other regions; there are seeds with a variety of silky para- 
chutes with which they may go ballooning on their own 
account, but in none of these contrivances has the mother of 
all shown greater versatility of invention than in the fashion- 
ing of her winged seeds. 
The winged seeds are not simply equipped with an ex- 
panded portion to aid them in sailing down the wind. Many 
other things must be attended to. The seed must be weighted 
just right and properly placed with regard to the center of 
gravity ; the wing must be so set to the breeze as to ensure that 
the seed will be carried a long distance, and various ingenious 
contrivances must be devised for sustaining the weight of the 
seeds in the air as long as possible. There problems, which 
still puzzle man in his own efforts at aerial navigation, have 
been solved again and again by Nature and each time in a 
different wa}^ as if to show the multiplicity of her resources. 
In imagination one may look back through the untold centuries 
and see her trying this and that invention. We see how the 
seeds not properly adjusted to all the conditions dropped be- 
neath the parent tree and were crowded and starved out as 
miserable failures while those more perfect fared on into new 
territory, there to reproduce a new plant and more seeds as 
perfect as the original. Then, too, a judicious selection had 
