TREE SEEDS THAT HAVE CHUTES It is a thrilling moment when the man who goes up with the balloon lets go at last, and drops to the ground. Before he drops, an um brella-like parachute opens, and by its aid, he comes to the ground gracefully, slowly, and alights unhurt. Should anything go wrong with his parachute he would drop to his death, so every onlooker is anxious as he comes down, and breathes a sigh of relief when the wonderful feat is accomplished.
Seeds with wings sail away on the wind, and seeds with parachutes descend so slowly and gracefully that the winds carry them far out of their courses. The trees most fortunate in scat tering their seeds, and thus colonising new ter ritory, have peculiar devices.
The seeds of the basswood hang in clusters attached to a narrow, leaf-like blade. This is a parachute, by which the whole cluster is able to sail away on a good breeze. There is no seed parachute like this among our forest trees. By this sign alone we may know the basswood trees.
The balls of the sycamore bump against the branches, and tiny seeds with hairy parachutes are loosened and scattered. Each is a minute spike, which might drop to the ground, but for the umbrella-like parachute made of a brush of fine hairs. By this, the wind lifts the seed, and carries it away.
Willow seeds, and those of the poplar, are almost too small to be seen. Each seed is hid
in a dainty fluff of white cotton, and in this the seed rides. We may miss seeing these trees in fruit, unless we look at the down which ac cumulates in June on the screens of windows and doors. The air is full of the fluffy stuff when the pods open. In a few days this harvest is over, and we may find the empty pods on the ground under our neighbour poplars, cotton woods, and willows.
The blue beech, or hornbeam, has a parachute which is leafy, and crinkled so as to look almost like a little boat. The shiny seed sits in one end, and when it gets free, it has a fine long sail through the air before it settles to the earth.
There are wings and parachutes on the seeds of other trees. When you find them you may know that the wind is the partner of the tree, by robbing it of its children. The wind is sav ing those children from death, which would have been their fate, if they fell on the ground under the shadow of the parent tree. If all the fields that adjoin the woods were left uncultivated for a few years they would grow up to forests. We know the name of the sower, who gathers seeds in the woods, and plants them; who is busy all the year at the endless work of the harvest and the sowing.