62 
THE STORY OR THE OAK TREE 
will find the acorn when the flower is gone. It is early 
Spring, the foliage leaves have just unfolded, in the 
staminate flower the pollen is ripe. A puff of wind 
shakes loose the pollen grains, they are blown against the 
pistillate flowers, the sticky surface of the pistil catches 
them, and the business of pollination is under way. 
When the cell in the pollen meets the egg-cell in the 
pistil, Nature knows that one important piece of busi¬ 
ness is done. The egg-cell is fertilized, and right away 
it begins to grow and divide. It has in it, now, the 
character of both its parents; let us see what it will be¬ 
come. 
At first it is nourished by food stored in the embryo- 
sac, food something like white of egg. The embryo 
develops into the seed; the bright petals of the corolla, 
no longer needed now, wither away; when the seed is 
ripe growth stops, the young tissues dry up and your 
acorn is cast loose from the parent tree. The reason the 
young tissues dry up is so that the acorn may rest with¬ 
out food until it is planted and can gather food for it¬ 
self. 
Now you understand what Mr. J. Arthur Thomson 
meant when he said, 
“Trace an oak tree to a sapling, to a seedling, to a seed 
and an ovule, and we come to a fertilized egg-cell, the 
beginning of individual life.” 
