Chapter XLVI: How Seed Babies Travel

“COME,” cried Bouncing Bet. “Now, I am going to tell you a wonderful, true fairy story. You never realized, did you, that plants travel? I mean that they travel without the help of human beings.”

“No,” the girls shook their heads.

“You can’t deny that they spread from place to place, can you?” asked Bet.

“Indeed, I can’t,” said Mary Frances; “the dandelions have spread all over our land within a short time.”

“And I’ll tell you how they did it,” Bet went on. “But first I’ll tell you—

WHY PLANTS TRAVEL

If the seeds of a plant always fell on ground nearby,
the space would soon become choked up, and the new seed
babies would have no chance to live; so, many plants
have been provided means of sending their seed babies a
long distance from the mother plant, and in this way
they have spread or traveled from place to place, until
some cover very large areas.

HOW PLANTS TRAVEL

_Seed Pods with Burry Coats_

Did you ever think, when you pick “beggar lice” and
“sand burrs” off your clothing and throw them down on
the ground, that you are helping the plant mother do
just what she wanted you to do with her seed baby?

She put “stickers” all over the coat of her seed baby
so that it might catch hold of your dress, or of the
fur of your doggie, or your cow, and be dropped in a
new place where the seed baby could grow with better
chances than at home near her.

When you make burr baskets out of the sticky burdock
seeds, unless you burn them, you are helping the
burdocks to travel.

_Pods which Shoot Seeds_

The mother plants of the “spider plant,” and of the
pansy, and of the violet send their seed babies to new
homes by using seed pods which burst open and shoot the
seeds far and wide in all directions.

_Tumble Weeds_

Some mother plants actually carry their seed babies to
new places.

The “tumble weeds” of the West dry up in Autumn,
and are broken off near the roots by the wind,
which carries them along over field and meadow; and
everywhere they go, they are dropping seed babies in
new places. If you watch them as they tumble about you
will feel like laughing at their comical appearance.

Now we have come to the fairy seed babies, the—

_Seed Babies with Wings_

You’ve seen them often—seed babies flying about on the
wings which their plant-mother gave them. Sometimes you
have helped them start to fly.

Oh, yes, you have.

Don’t you remember when you pulled the fluffy head off
a dandelion, and blew it to “see what time it was?”

Of course you didn’t know it, but you sent scores
of dandelion seed babies floating off in the air on
their fairy wings. Perhaps the wind took one up where
you left off blowing, and landed it such a distance
away from its old home that it might have seemed like
hundreds of miles to the little thing.

Milk-weed seed babies fastened to their beautiful silky
down, which is so light it floats along like a fairy’s
feather, actually travel on the “wings of the wind.”

Some trees, too, give their seed babies wings. Haven’t
the winged seeds of the maple fooled you into thinking
they were birds or insects of some kind? It has amused
you, too, to notice how far the wings of these seed
babies have carried them on the wind.

“Haven’t the plant mothers provided wonderfully for their seed babies’ welfare!” exclaimed Mary Frances.

“Yes,” replied Bet; “back of the plant mother is another mother—Mother Nature. Oh, but she is wise!”