74 
THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
The true winged seeds are known to be such at the start ; they 
are hung up where all may see. Not so, however, with the 
parachute seeds. While they are ripening there are few evi- 
dences of the fact about. The uninitiated could never single 
out from among the ripening seed-pods the caskets containing 
these treasures, until suddenly some fine day the pods open and 
the secret is out. The silky hairs, compactly folded into the 
smallest compass while growing, are now gaily spread and 
with the first breeze the seed is launched. 
Not all winged seeds, we hasten to say, are locked up in 
seed-pods until mature, but a great many of them are. As 
with the winged seeds, Nature has various ways of arriving 
at the same end. Now she modifies a seed-coat into a para- 
chute and again it may be the whole fruit that is thus modified, 
or possibly the calyx or the style. Then too, there are seeds 
that appear undecided whether to be winged seeds or para- 
chute seeds. Such a one is the catalpa, which all winter long 
lies snugly hidden in the long cylindrical pods hanging on the 
tree. When, in early spring, the pods split into two long 
valves and the seeds come tumbling out we see that they are 
winged for a short distance and then fringed with silky hairs. 
The trumpet creeper (Bignonia) , one of the catalpa's nearest 
of kin scarcely belongs with the parachute-seeds though it, like 
them, depends upon its lightness to ensure its transportation. 
Sometimes it becomes a nice matter to distinguish a fruit 
from a seed, and to discover just what part has been modified 
into the parachute. As thistle-down and milkweed silk float 
by, we can scarcely believe that one is an entire fruit and the 
other but a seed. Yet so, it is. The so-called seed of the 
thistle is really a fruit, and the silky parachute or pappus that 
carries it is made from what would be the calyx in another 
flower. The milkweed fruit, on the contrary, is the milkweed 
pod, and its seeds are carried by a parachute made from the 
coat of the seed itself. The dandelion belongs to the thistle 
