VIII. THE NOVEMBER SEED-CROP "'Tis all a myth that Autumn grieves -Samuel M. Peck (Autumn's Mirth). November, in our latitude, is nature's season of plenty. Her work of crop production is done. Living is easy for all her creatures. The improvident may have their choice of fruits, or may eat only of the seeds that are best liked and most easily gathered. The frugal and foresighted may gather winter stores. It was no mere arbitrary impulse of our Puritan pioneers that settled upon November as the season of special Thanksgiving. Nature's prodigality of seed production is for the benefit of her animal population. She gives them the excess. They in their turn are very wasteful in their handling of the seed. They never eat all that they gather, but scatter and lose some of it in places favorable for growth next season. Thus they aid in distributing and in planting the seed. The sleek and surfeited meadow mice scatter grains along their runways and never find them again, and these lost seeds are favorably situated for growth at the proper season. It is only a remnant of them that will escape the more careful search of the beasts when the hunger of the lean season is on, but so great is the excess of production, that this remnant is, in the nice balance of nature, sufficient to keep the species going. It is a long, lean season that follows on November in our latitude, and the seed-crop, though abundant, is not sufficient to feed all the wild animal population. So nature takes various measures to eke it out. She puts to sleep in hibernation the great majority of animals. These include nearly all of the lesser animals and a few even of the larger ones, like the woodchuck, now fat and drowsy. She removes the greater number of the birds by migration to feed in summer climes. There remain to be fed through the winter only a small proportion of the birds and a larger proportion of the mammals, including ourselves. All these are by nature improvidentgiven to eating to excess when there is plenty, forgetting · future needs. So, she makes it impossible that any lusty foragers, or all of them put together, shall be able to dissipate and waste her patrimony. She keeps it in a considerable part from them against the hour of need. If she grows luscious fruits which, when ripe, will fall into their mouths she, also grows roots underground, and imposes the labor of digging to get them. If some of her seeds ripen all at once and fall readily, others ripen at intervals, and are held tightly in their husks. It takes labor to get them. The animals that eat in winter have to work their way. FIG. 38. Specialized seedhandling apparatus: a, the teeth of a porcupine; b, the beak of a finch; c, the beak of a crossbill, adapted for extracting the seeds of pine cones. Nature's population is suited to her products. Her seed-eating rodents are all armed with stout chisellike teeth, adapted for cutting anything, from the nutshells to chaff. Her seedeating birds are armed with stout, seed-cracking, husk-opening beaks. Her little birds are agile, and can cling with their feet to swaying twigs, and ravage the loaded seed-cones pendent upon them. The beaks of the crossbills are especially adapted to extracting the seeds from the cones of our evergreen trees. The seeds we cultivate for food are cereals and lentils. With the exception of maize they came with our ancestors from other climes. Some of the native cereals have heavier seeds, but we have not learned their culture. We have been satisfied with the grains and pulse of our agricultural tradition. Wild rice is marketed locally at fancy prices; but it is still wild rice, gathered where nature produces it in the old way. There is no culture of it worthy of the name. The cereals are mainly the edible seeds of grasses (Gramineae): the seeds of sedges (Cyperaceae), if edible, should perhaps be included; and there is one seed of very different botanical character, the buckwheat, a member of the jointweed family (Polygonaceae), commonly rated a cereal. We can find wild seeds of all these groups growing about us, some of them of good size and quality, but most of them far too small to be of possible value to us. The lentils are all members of the pulse family (Leguminosae), and their more or less beanlike seeds grow in two-valved pods. A few sorts of these protein-rich seeds will be found hanging in autumn. So great is the diversity according to climate, situation, and locality, that it is not possible to indicate what sorts of seeds are to be expected. Besides the cereals and lentils there are other wild seeds, allied to those we cultivate, for minor uses: for their flavors, for the oils they contain, for their medicinal properties, etc. And there are many others that are of interest to us solely on account of the very special ways in which they contribute to the preservation of the species, by providing for their own dispersal. Some are armed with hooks or barbs that catchin the wool of animals (as indeed they do also in our own clothing), and thus they steal a ride, which may end in some new and unoccupied locality. These grow at low elevations-not higher than the backs of the larger quadrupeds. Some lightweight seeds develop soaring hairs, which catch the wind and by it are carried about. Some of the larger dry seeds of trees develop parachutes by means of which they are able to glide to a considerable distance from the place in which they grow. Some take a ride by water, and to aid their navigation, develop water-repellant seedcoats, boat-shaped forms, corky floats, etc. Finally, some develop automatic ejectors like the capsules of the touch-me-not or jewel-weed, which collapse with explosive violence; or like the close-pinching hulls of witch-hazel, which shoot out the seeds to a distance of several yards. But most seeds are featureless, as regards means of dispersal. They merely fall, singly or in clusters, and are moved about only with the chance removal of the soil with which they mix. FIG. 39. Two "seeds" that often steal a ride with us: a, sweet cicely (Osmorhiza); b, pitchforks (Bidens). Among the curious devices for securing the aid of amimals in seed-distribution none are more curious and interesting than those shown by the common umbelwort known as sweet cicely. The seeds (in their containers) are suspended in pairs at the end of two slender stalks, their sharp points directed downward, close to the stem. There are blunter points directed outward, but the barbs all over the surface appear to be directed the wrong way, as if to prevent getting caught in wool. But when a furry coat pushes against the outer end of a pair of these seeds, the blunt ends aided by the opposing barbs catch just deeply enough to turn the seeds end for end: in such position the long points enter deeply, the barbs hold securely and the attachment at the tip of the slender stalks is readily broken. This device needs, but to be seen in use to be appreciated. Of wild seeds there is no end. It should be the object of the following study to survey a small area to find the wild allies of our cultivated seed crops, to observe the differences in size and containers, and, form the means of dispersal of as many as possible of the others. NOTE: In this book we speak of seeds not in the botanical sense of the term, but in the sense of it as used by the seedsman, and as understood by the general public. What we call seeds may, therefore, be true seeds (ripened ovules) like beans, or dry fruits (ripened pistils) like pitchforks (fig. 39), or dry fruits in their husks like oats. Study 8. The November Seed-Crop The program of this study will cover the exploration of a small area well overgrown with herbage. The variety of forms found will be greater if diverse situations, wet and dry, in sun and in shade, are included. Collect seeds of all kinds as encountered (omitting fleshy fruits and nuts), and note what sort of plant produces each kind. It will be well to take specimens of the seeds in their containers for closer examination at home. The apparatus needed, besides knife and lens, will be a supply of envelopes, large and small, to hold the specimens collected, with names and data. The record of this study will consist of annotated and illustrated lists of the seeds examined, arranged under as many categories as desired, such as: Cereals, Lentils, Seeds with hairs for air-drifting, etc. Let the list include such data as, kind of plant, size of seed (give measurements in millimeters: if very small, lay enough seeds, in line and touching each other, upon a metric rule—such as Fig. 1 on p. 12—to reach one centimeter, and divide for average diameter), characters affecting dispersal, characters of hull affecting its release, animals observed to feed upon it or to live within it, etc. Let the illustrations be simple outline sketches. As to names, if you do not know them, save time by asking an instructor or someone who does know them. |