PLANTS AND INSECTS 
SOME OF THEIR QUEER WAYS 
D ID you ever watch the clover go to sleep in the evening about dark, 
and drop their little leaf-heads, for all) the world as if they were 
nodding? The wood-sorrel does the same, and the leaves of the locust- 
tree. 
A good many flowers, also, close their petals at nightfall and go to 
sleep. However, there are owls among flowers, as well as among birds 
and people, who like to lie awake at night and sleep during the day. 
The night-blooming cereus is one of the most beautiful flowers in the 
world, when one looks down into its deep cup and sees row upon row 
of delicate white, waxy petals enfolding each other in such matchless 
grace, and the hundreds and hundreds of yellow-tipped stamens and 
pistils forming its heart of gold. But it blooms only at night, and just 
one night. When the sun rises its pretty petals grow) limp and brown 
and droop over its golden heart. Its beauty is gone forever. 
Another curious thing about plants which you may not have no¬ 
ticed is the Way they turn the top side of their leaves to the sun or 
light. If you place a plant in the window, you will find that soon each 
leaf has turned its greenest face toward the window where the light 
comes in. 
Now turn the pot entirely around, and in a little while every leaf 
will have twisted itself around, sometimes in what would seem to be 
rather uncomfortable positions, in orderl to again face the light. 
But the queerest of all plant ways is that of the Dionaea muscipula, 
or Venus’ fly-trap. It grows in the sandy bogs of the southeastern part 
of North Carolina. At the top where the leaf seems about to end, it 
spreads out again into a sort of folder like the back of a book, only with 
a spring in the middle that makes it clap together like a steel rat-trap 
if the least thing touches it. On the top surface and along the edges 
are fine hairs, and if a fly buzzing by even touches one of those hairs, 
“clap” goes the little trap and Mr. Fly is squeezed to death between 
the two flaps. 
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