370 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
[September. 
®©YS 4 dms 5 ’ ©(DIEOTMS 
The Doctor’s Talks. 
There are so many things that I would like to 
talk to you about, that I never feel at loss for sub¬ 
jects to write upon, but I am often in doubt as to 
which will most interest my young friends at a 
particular time. I am always glad when you let 
me know what you would like to have me talk 
about. Hence, when “H. D. B.,” of Passaic Co., 
N. J., wrote: “ Can you not tell us something of 
The Methods in which Seeds are Distributed,” 
I was pleased to get his note, for it showed what at 
least one boy was thinking about, and I have no 
doubt that it will interest other boys and girls as well. 
We consume a great many fruits, thinking, no 
doubt, that they 
were created especi¬ 
ally for our gratifi¬ 
cation, while the 
fact is that many 
fruits we esteem so 
highly are formed 
especially to make 
sure that the seeds 
they contain will 
be properly dis¬ 
tributed, or, it may be, safely preserved. But be¬ 
fore we talk any further we must first understand 
What We Mean by “Fruit.” 
You will, no doubt, be very ready with an answer, 
and say that a strawberry is a fruit and so is an 
apple, but if told that a bean-pod or a poppy-head, 
was a fruit, you might be disposed to doubt it. 
Flowers you know take on a wonderful variety of 
forms. There is, as a general thing, a showy part, 
the corolla, and within this some bodies called 
stamens, and in the center of the flower a pistil or 
pistils. The pistil contains minute bodies, called 
ovules, which in time will become seeds. Strictly 
speaking, a fruit is the ripened pistil, containing 
the seeds, and whatever may be attached to it. 
The common notion of a fruit, that it is some¬ 
thing juicy and eatable, will not hold under this 
definition, for a chestnut is as much a fruit as a 
peach. In talking about the methods for the scat¬ 
tering of seeds, we must begin with the fruit. The 
Fig. 2.— THE “ CRANESBILL ” FLOWERS. 
chief object of the fruit is first to perfect, and 
afterwards to distribute the seeds. One of the 
most beautiful fruits or seed-pods that I know of, 
is called the “ Sand-Box.” It grows upon a tree of 
moderate size in Central America, and when ripe is 
about the size of an average orange, but much flat¬ 
tened. It is woody, with a polished surface, and 
is regularly grooved, as shown much reduced in 
size, in figure 1 ; it looks more like a work pro¬ 
duced by a wood-carver than like a seed-vessel of 
natural growth. Not only is this a most beautiful 
object, but it illustrates one of the methods in 
which seeds are distributed. Several years ago, a 
friend sent me a box filled with these Sand-boxes ; 
at that time I had a class in botany, and I gave one 
of the capsules to each of the dozen or more young 
men of the class. I told them that the fruit was a 
most interesting one, and that I would tell them 
about it at another time. A few days after one of 
the young men of the class came to me with his face 
showing the greatest astonishment. “I was sitting 
in my room,” said he, “ and there was a great bang, 
a rattling and scattering of pieces. The beautiful 
Sand-box had burst, and the fragments were all 
over the room.”_“You have now learned,” said 
I, “from the capsule itself, what I might have 
told you, that it is a wonderful device for the 
scattering of seeds.” Each groove in the fruit 
represents a cell that contains a large seed. The 
sides of these cells are of a very hard wood, 
with the fibres so arranged that in drying they 
cause the parts to fly apart with a sudden report, 
and the seeds they contain arc thrown to the 
distance of many yards. The method of the 
“Sand-box” in distributing its seeds, being on 
a large scale, and accompanied by a loud report, 
is very noticeable, but it is really no more won¬ 
derful or interesting than the many ways in which 
Our Common Plants Scatter Seeds 
about us every day. In this, as in other things, we 
look after the far-fetched and noisy, and overlook 
the common and quiet. There is, all over the coun¬ 
try, a very common plant that has an arrangement 
for scattering its seeds which is quite as wonderful 
as that of the Central America Sand-box, but it is 
very small, and does not make any noise. There 
is found in every State east of the Mississippi River, 
a plant commonly known as “ Cranesbill,” or 
“Spotted Cranesbill.” The botanists’ name for it 
is Geranium maculatum, and it is closely related to 
those plants cultivated in the garden as Geraniums. 
You can find this plant growing almost everywhere, 
in the edges of the woods, in the fields, etc. The 
stems are about two feet high, and bear pale-pur¬ 
plish flowers. That you may the better recognize 
the plant, I give you, in figure 2, two flowers of 
the real size, and also a very young seed-pod. I 
also give in figure 3, a full grown seed-pod, or fruit, 
as you should learn to call it. When you find a 
plant with ripening fruit like this, you must watch 
it. You can cut off the upper part of the stem, 
with several such fruits, take it home, and place it 
in water, when it will ripen as well as if left on the 
plant. When the seed-pod is ripe, you will find 
Something very Curious will Take Place. 
That which appeared like a single pod will break 
up and show that it is made of five little cups, with 
a seed in each, and each cup is hung upon a spring, 
so that when it is quite ripe the cup will let go its 
hold, and the spring will curl suddenly with such a 
flirt as to throw the little seed that it held to quite 
a distance. Fig. 4 shows the pod thus splittingup, 
and throwing its seeds about. Another very com¬ 
mon plant, found everywhere in shady places, 
and especially along watercourses or ponds, is the 
“Wild Touch-Me-Not,” or “Jewel Weed.” 
It may have other names in different parts of the 
country, and that you may know it, 1 give in figure 
5, an engraving of the peculiar flower, a leaf, and 
a full-grown pod. I do not know of any other 
plant that has such pale-green leaves, tender 
stems, and yellow or orange-colored flowers of 
just this shape. There arc two kinds, one with 
much darker-colored flowers than the other, but 
they both have similar pods, and it is these that I 
wish you to especially notice. One of these pods 
is shown in figure 5; if left alone it will in time 
burst and scatter its seeds, but you can make it do 
this if, when you find a ripe pod, you give it the 
least possible squeeze between the thumb and 
finger. A very slight pressure will cause the five 
parts of the pod to break away from the central 
portion, and as each comes apart it will forcibly 
twist and send out the seeds with a sudden jerk. 
The pod, after this bursting, will appear much as 
in figure 6, though no two will look alike ; in some 
cases the parts of the pod will be thrown off, and 
all will be a thorough wreck of what was before a 
very regular pod. These two examples, though so 
small, and constantly happening all around us, are 
quite as interesting as the more showy “ Sand-box ” 
of Central America. We cultivate in gardens 
plants closely related to the Jewel-weed, now gen¬ 
erally called Balsams, but when I was a youngster, 
they were always called “ Touch-me-nots.” Those 
at present mostly cultivated have very double 
flowers, and do not bear seed-pods very freely, 
while the old-fashioned single kind bear a greater 
abundance of much larger ones. It used to be 
great fun to pick these pods, which may be done 
with careful handling, and then, by pressing them 
slightly, make them burst, and throw the seeds 
TOUCH-ME-NOT 
FLOWER AND POD. 
about. This method of scattering seeds, the sud¬ 
den breaking up of the pod that contains them, is 
only one of the many methods provided for their 
distribution. Besides being a very interesting fact, 
it has a practical application. If you have in 
your garden the well-known Drum¬ 
mond’s Phlox, or any Violets or 
Pansies, of which you wish to save 
the seeds, you will find it neces¬ 
sary to gather the seed-pods when 
they are full-grown, and just about 
ripening, and place them under a 
sieve or in a paper box. If you 
do this, the pods will burst open 
and scatter their seeds where 
these can be saved. If the pods 
are left upon the plants in the 
garden, they will burst and the 
scattered seeds will be lost. The 
list of plants having some such 
means of scattering their seeds as aboTe described, 
is a long one, and I have only mentioned a few of 
the more common ones, that every child may watch 
for himself. It has always been my intention 
in these “Talks” to make my young readers 
more observing—more wide-awake to see the in¬ 
teresting things in nature that are all around ns~ 
6. “TOUCH-ME- 
NOT ” POD 
BUR9TED. 
