The Quiet Hour With Tinkerbell.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 57, 7 March 1936, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Quiet Hour With Tinkerbell.

Autumn has come with its early evenings and cooler winds. Very soon now the fruit will all be picked, and the leaves of brown and red will be dropping to the ground. Have you been out into the country lately? For now is the time that you will see as you look across the paddocks the thistle seeds in flight like little soft showers of fluff. Thistledown, like dandelion-down, is the seed of the plant, which is borne along on the winds to a new home. These seeds, are scattered far and wide. The down makes it more difficult for them to sink in the air, and it gives, too, the favouring breeze something to gripThis is only one example of the immense variety of ways in which Nature provides for her seeds and sends them out into the world. For example, coconuts are floated by the currents of the sea to distant islands; sometimes the

fruits become attached to passing animals, cling for a while by means of roughness, hooks or bristles, and then fall or are rubbed off; the stalk of the peanut bends to the earth and pushes the fruit into a hole; in some plants the little seed case bursts with a sudden bang and the seeds pop out in all directions; yet another is that of the hard grass seeds, which work their way along the ground. In all these and in many different ways we are shown that the plants have counteracted their great handicap— that they are fixed to one place. Those have been most successful which have been best able to scatter their seeds, for, although many seeds come to nothing, wide scattering increases the chances of finding 'suitable and less crowded places where they may sprout and grow, where the seedling may become a plant which leafs and flowers, fruits and seeds, and resumes the journey over the earth.