THE WONDERS OF THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 
xrn. 
Seeds and their Disseminations. 
OTANICALLY speaking, all seeds 
are fruits, and what is usually 
termed fruit; is simply a fleshy 
protection to the true fruit, or 
what we term seed, from their 
conception to maturity. The 
vast number of seeds a plant 
produces, the variety of their 
forms, colors, and the diversity 
of elementary substances of 
which they are composed, the 
variety and extent of their uses, 
the ingenious and truly wonder¬ 
ful manner in which they are 
disseminated, makes them ob¬ 
jects of the greatest interest in 
the study of plant life. To the 
botanist a seed is not a mere 
kernel or nut, valuable only as an article of food, or as 
a means of perpetuation and distribution of trees or 
plants ; it is to them the embodiment of a true life, and 
by which they know from its appearance precisely 
what it will produce when consigned to the earth; to 
them the seed-form is never noticed, excepting to estab¬ 
lish its identity, then the fully-developed tree or plant, 
in full fruit or flower, is brought plainly to their view. 
When a fruit has attained its full maturity, it opens, 
the different parts of which it is composed separate, and 
the seeds which it contains burst the bands that, until 
now, kept them conflned in the cavity in which they 
were developed. This action, by which the seeds are 
naturally dispersed over the surface of the ground, at 
the period when they are ripe, is called dissemination. 
In the wild or natural state of plants, the dissemina¬ 
tion of the seeds is the most powerful agent in the pro¬ 
duction of the species. In fact, were the seeds con¬ 
tained in the fruit not to issue in order to be dispersed 
over the earth and there be developed, species would 
cease to be reproduced, and entire races would disappear; 
and as all plants have a determinate duration, a period 
would necessarily arrive when all would have ceased to 
live, and when vegetation would have forever disap¬ 
peared from the surface of the globe. The commence¬ 
ment of dissemination indicates, in a great measure, the 
termination of life in annual plants, for, before it can 
take place, it is necessary that the fruit should have 
attained maturity and that it should have be¬ 
come in some degree dried; but still this phenomenon 
does not take place in annual herbaceous plants until 
the period when vegetation has entirely ceased. In 
woody plants, dissemination always takes place during 
the period of rest into which they enter when their liber 
has become exhausted, and is no longer able to give rise 
to leaves or organs of fructification. 
The fecundity of plants, in other words, the astonish¬ 
ing number of seeds which they produce, is one of the 
causes which are most powerful in facilitating their re¬ 
production, and in effecting their surprising multipli¬ 
cation. A single capsule of the white Poppy has been 
known to contain 8,000 seeds, and a single capsule of 
the Vanilla, from ten to 1,500 ; a single stalk of Com 
will produce 2,000 seeds ; a single plant of Elecampane, 
3,000 ; and a single spike of Typlia Major, or Greater 
Cat’s-tail, 10,000; a single plant of Tobacco has been 
found by calculation to produce the almost incredible 
number of 360,000 ; and a single plant of Spleenwort, 
Asplenium, has been thought by careful estimation to 
produce at least a million seeds. Let one imagine the 
regularly increasing progression of this number, merely 
to the tenth generation of these plants, and he will 
hardly conceive how the whole surface of the earth 
should not be covered by them. But many causes tend 
to neutralize, in part, the effects of this astonishing fe¬ 
cundity, which, by its very excess, would soon prove 
injurious to the reproduction of plants. In fact, all 
seeds are not placed by nature in circumstances favor¬ 
able to their development. Besides, numerous animals, 
and man himself, deriving their principal nutriment 
from fruits and seeds, destroy incalculable quantities of 
them; for seeds are simply one form of life upon which 
another form subsists. A seed is, in reality, as much a 
living thing as an egg ; both lives are dormant, and are 
brought into activity through the same influences, in 
different degrees. 
Various circumstances favor the natural dispersion of 
seeds. Some of these result from the structure of the peri- • 
carp, and others depend upon the seeds themselves. Thus, 
there are pericarps which open naturally with a kind of 
elasticity, by means of which the seeds contained by 
them are projected to greater or less distances. The 
fruits of Hura Crepitans, the Sand-box tree, indigenous 
in tropical America, when ripe and exposed to the action 
of a dry atmosphere, burst with great force, accom¬ 
panied by a loud, sharp report, like that of a pistol, and 
at the same time throwing the seeds to a very great dis¬ 
tance. From the report made by the bursting of these 
pods, the natives, where this tree abounds, call it the 
‘ ‘ Monkey’s dinner-bell. ” The seeds of the Entada Scan- 
dens, commonly known as Florida Beans, are contained 
in woody pods several feet in length. When ripe they 
burst with terrific force and loud report, scattering the 
seeds, under some circumstances, more than a hundred 
feet. Many of these on the coast of Cuba are thrown 
into the water, and carried by the strong oceanic cur¬ 
rents to the coast of Finland, where they are regarded 
as objects of great curiosity. The seed-pods of the Wis¬ 
taria Chinensis have the same peculiarity. The fruits of 
Dioncea Muscipula, the Fraxinella and Balsam, separate 
their valves rapidly, and by a kind of spring, project 
their seeds by this means to some distance. The fruit 
of Momordica Elaterium, when ripe, separates from the 
peduncle which supported it, and projects its seeds with 
surprising rapidity through the cicatrix of its point of 
attachment. The seeds of oats, when ripe, are projected 
from the calyx with such violence, that on a fine and 
dry day, in passing through a ripe field, they may be 
heard as they are thrown out with a sudden snap. The 
pericarp of the dorsiferous Ferns is furnished with a 
sort of peculiar elastic ring, intended, as it would ap' 
pear, for the very purpose of projecting the seeds. The 
i'll! i It 
