The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-06-16

three blossoms. They are all common
plants, so common indeed that two of
them are usually termed weeds. They
have, however their own special Names
dandelion, clover and dogfennel, and they
are important because they are typical
representatives of the largest order in the
floral kingdom, an order which, although
it was the last to appear in the vegetable
world, has outstripped every other and
leads them all to-day. Botanists call it
the composite order. Its members are
really floral socialists. Take this clover, for
instance. What we call the blossom is in
reality many blossoms. Look at the mass
under this glass. You will see that the
clover head is made up of numerous mi
mute cups in compact cluster.
If you pull one of these tiny cups from
the head and put the uprooted end in your
mouth, as you used to love to do when a
child you will taste single drop Of
nectar. That is what the cup has to offer
the bee who helps to fertilize the blossom.
But now study the cup. 1t is in itself
perfect blossom. AS we see it, it is now
tiny tube, but it was once possessed of
five minute petals which have united in
the present tubular shape. There is still
suggestion of the time when the petals
we're separate, in the little pointed scallops
only descended from a fve-petaled
ancestor, but that ancestor was at one
time a separate flower, growing on its in
dividual stem and trusting to good for
tune to send some fertilizing insect in its
way, that it's kind might be perpetuated.
The chances of such fortune were small.
The flowers were so tiny they must fire.
quently have been overlooked by the in
Sects.
But those flowers that grew closest to-
gether, forming little clusters, were most
noticeable, and were discovered, robbed of
their nectar and incidentally fertilized by
freebooting insects These blossoms bore
became fixed in their descendants. In
other words, unable, by reason of their
minuteness, to attract the insects and Sc
cure fertilization, they established colo
MES, so to speak, that in the aggregate
they might obtain that which as lndiyid
uals they were powerless to secure. They
crowded closer and closer together until
they formed a solid. compact mass, as in
the clover here. The many-petaled flowers
found it inconvenlent to arrange them
selves in the composite order, and so, as
we see in the clover, the petals have CO.
alesced to form tube-shaped flower, and,
as the tubular form is better adapted to
receive fertilization by the bee, that form
has been perpetuated.
Now, as we have seen, the chances for
the survival of the isolated individual
were very small in the cases of these tiny
flowers. BY cooperation, however this
order of plants has, as | have said, become
the largest in the floral kingdom, although
it was the latest to appear. The compo-
site have circled the globe. They fill our
gardens and flourish in our lighthouses.
The pretty .goldenrod, the dig
nifed asters, the aristocratc chrys-
anthemums, the dainty daisies, all
belong to this great socialistic order. He'll
anthus, the big, beaming sunfiower, is
charter member. So, too, is the wretched
little tarweed with its pungent balsamic
odor. One could almost fill this page of
the CALL with a list of the composite
plants.
1t is quite true that in every instance the
individual flowers have sacrificed some
thing to the race. The single tiny blossom
that can pull from this dandelion, for
instance, has no individuality whatever
By and by, had lett it alone, it might
have taken to itself wings and sailed
fluffy off upon the breeze, to sink to
earth and renew its life again, perhaps a
thousand miles from here. Seeing it
floating poet might have found in it the
theme for a poem. A scientist might have
seen in it universal law, or seer have
reasoned from it to life eternal, but the
little seed would be merely dandelion
seed-one of many hundred that the
blossom sent out. But for the co-opera-
ton of its fellows in the floral body social
it could never have been at all. Neverthe-
less, but for it and it's fellows, the blossom
could never have been. The law of CO.
operation, like all of natures laws, makes
for rightness and fitness along the whole
line.
Nature teaches us, with ever-repeated