Motile or migratory state of plants, and many are the means of transportationīy land, wind, wave, stream, passing herd, and flying bird,īiennial plants, like the beet, carrot, etc., spend one season in preparingįor the coming days of inactivity and exposure, and close theirĬareers the following year by using up the accumulated store of food Is the offspring of the plant and the childhood of its kind, though soįashioned and protected that it can pass safely through a period ofĭrought or cold when its parent would have succumbed. Time is carried far from the place where it was produced. Packed within thick coats, is preserved from death, and at the same Snow, is a familiar and perhaps striking example that may enforce the The seed of some hedgerow weed, as itīecomes loosened from its attachment upon the lifeless mother-plant,Īnd is blown for rods or even miles over the surface of the incrusted The seed is also the form in which plant-life is easily transportedįrom place to place. Speak, carried over from one growing season to another in the ripened We thus see that in the annual plants the life of the species is, so to The prospective life and activity of a whole field of waving corn may be considered as stored up in a few pecks of apparently lifeless seed-corn safely housed in the granary. A corn-plant completes its growth in not far from a hundred days, and leaves its accumulated vitality stored up in the grains upon the ear. The bean-plant, in a different way, climbs its appointed pole, enjoys the same sunshine and shower, produces its blossoms, fills long pods with ripened seeds, and gives up its life like all its fellows in the field. It, however, prepared the way for many successors, in the ripened seeds, each one of which when given favorable conditions will germinate, grow, reproduce its kind, and thus finish another cycle in the realm of vegetable life. The great sunflower, that grows into a giant in a single season and defies the summer sun and storm, falls an easy victim to the frosts of autumn. Such plants constitute that large portion of our vegetation known as the annuals. In a climate where hot and cold, or wet and dry, seasons regularly succeed each other, many of our most common economic plants have adapted themselves to these stated changes of outward conditions, and run their course during a single growing season. A drought hastens the processes of reproduction, and insufficient nourishment encourages an early if not an abundant fruitfulness. All vegetation obeys the injunction to multiply and replenish the earth, but with the greatest determination when there are present suffering and impending death. Plants as well as animals have periods when they need to conserve all their energies, husband all their vitality.
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