50 
THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
to be made of the plants to bear these seeds. ' The burs, the 
berries, the ballooning seeds might be borne near to the earth, 
but seeds that were to be launched on the breeze had to be 
hung high in air to ensure a good start and as long a distance 
as possible from the ground. 
Since the pines, spruces, and their allies are among the 
oldest of seed-producing plants, the pine-seed is doubtless of 
one of Nature's first creations in winged seeds. In this the 
wing is thin like that of an insect and made from the outer 
coat of the seed. Primitive as it is, the immense coniferous 
forests spread over the globe attest to its efficiency. It does 
not merely fly with the wind as a bit of paper might. When 
let out of its scaly casket it begins forthwith to spin about with 
the center of the seed for an axis and thus retards for a minute 
or more its descent from the treetops to the earth. Meanwhile 
the breeze, be it ever so light, has borne it on to new oppor- 
tunities for growth and development. 
The ash key is fashioned after the pattern adopted for 
the seed of the pine, but here it is the ovary instead of the seed 
coat that is produced into a wing. The seed or rather the 
fruit, since this is a ripened ovary, spins in much the same way, 
in a plane parallel to the surface of the earth, and so comes 
slowly to its final resting place far from the parent tree. It 
is interesting to note how the various species of ash have varied 
the pattern of their fruits from the slender oar shaped key 
of the white ash to the broader clumsier pattern of the black 
ash, and yet all are equally effective in flight. 
So characteristic is the winged fruit of the ash and other 
trees, that a special word, samara, has been coined for it. The 
samara is the badge of the ash and maple families, the ashes 
bearing their keys singly and the maples in pairs. By this 
sign the unmaplelike box elder shows its kinship with far no- 
bler trees. Of slightly different pattern are the rounded sam- 
aras of the elm and hop tree, each with its single seed in the 
