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A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga744
of the seed is provided for. Fruit trees and plants surround the seed with
a sweet covering, that it may be eaten by insect and animal, and the seed
distributed. Others have a hard covering to protect the seed or nut from
the winter frosts, but which covering rots with the spring rains and allows
the germ to sprout. Others surround the seed with a fleecy substance, so
that the wind may carry it here and there and give it a chance to find a home
where it is not so crowded. Another tree has a little pop-gun arrangement,
by means of which it pops its seed to a distance of several feet.
Other plants have seeds that are covered with a burr or “sticky” bristles,
which enables them to attach themselves to the wool of sheep and other
animals, and thus be carried about and finally dropped in some spot
far away from the parent plant, and thus the scattering of the species
be accomplished. Some plants show the most wonderful plans and
arrangements for this scattering of the seed in new homes where there is
a better opportunity for growth and development, the arrangements for
this purpose displaying something very much akin to what we would call
“ingenuity” if it were the work of a reasoning mind. There are plants called
cockle-burs whose seed-pods are provided with stickers in every direction,
so that anything brushing against them is sure to pick them up. At the end
of each sticker is a very tiny hook, and these hooks fasten themselves tightly
into anything that brushes against it, animal wool, hair, or clothing, etc. Some
of these seeds have been known to have been carried to other quarters of
the globe in wool, etc., there to find new homes and a wider field.
Other plants, like the thistle, provide their seed with downy wings, by
which the wind carries them afar to other fields. Other seeds have a faculty
of tumbling and rolling along the ground to great distances, owing to their
peculiar shape and formation. The maple provides its seed with a peculiar
arrangement something like a propeller screw, which when the wind strikes
the trees and looses the seed, whirls the latter through the air to a distance of
a hundred yards or more. Other seeds are provided with floating apparatus,
which enables them to travel many miles by stream or river, or rain washes.