The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-03-10
MSsMs6USH. TREE AND VINE
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Above me, on the mOuntaln-top, my
neighbor, the poet, has garden of roses.
He has terraced the mountain for 200 feet
or more, and has converted the terraces
into masses of beautiful blossoms. There
are red roses, pink roses, white, yellow, and
some. indeed, that are almost black. The
humming- BIRDS the bees, the butter
flies all revel in their sweetness. Their
fragrance fills the air, and their beauty de-
lights the eye. l love to go and sit in the
garden of my neighbor, the poet.
But Just below me, in a warm, sheltered
nook, where the mountain seems to have
sat down and made lap" to hold it, my
neighbOr, the farmer, has also garden of
roses. 1t covers many acres of goodly brown
soil, which he keeps free from every
weed or blade of grass that might
fitch bit of moisture or food
from his garden. Just now, too, it is
mass OF fragrant bloom, pink and white
sea that losses and ripples in the breeze, as
though the papers were not full of stories of
billiards and storms and March winds
blowing elsewhere.
Not to be outdone by either neighbor, I,
too, have a garden of roses. | give it
neither thought nor care, save to enjoy it,
as it grows freely as the winds blow. The
birds have the freedom of it, and it is the
gath, ring place, daily, of a feathered mob,
who hutter in and out among the leaves of
the pussy willows" surrounding it, but
do not modest my tiny white roses.
My poet neighbor calls his roses by beau
tifuI names, La France, Gold of Ophir.
Gloire de Dion, Cloth of Gold. Ny farmer
neighhor knows his as peaches and pears,
apples, cherries, plums and almonds, and
his garden is an orchard.
Ny roses are berries, wild blackberries
and strawberries growing in the ravine
amid tang1e of swamp-willow and hazel,
watercress and brakes.
Each OF US IS right In the names we give
our growing treasures, but |, also, am right
in calling them all roses. They are all one
family, springing from a common stock,
differing only as family of children differ,
John becoming lawyer, Henry an editor,
Eliza school-teacher and Kate musician,
though they are all still the Browns or
the Smiths.
This numerous family, aristocratic
though some of its members have grown to
be considered, is of quite humble origin.
The type and ancestor OF them all is the
modest brier rose of the hedgerow.
Just what family jars (there are rose
jars, you know may have induced to the
many varieties in our three gardens we
cannot say. We can only guess at the long
chain of events connecting the rose hip of
the wayside dog-rose bush with the golden
pippin or the Moorpark apricot in the Or
chard. Gray describes the roSe-hip as "a
strawberry turned inside out" but from
the roSe-hip TO the almond seems a longer
stride, while the almond and the straw
berry seem as far removed as the east is
from the west, although the connection is
very close. The whole story hinges on the
common instinct of all created things to
reproduce their kind and the struggles of
each TO adapt itself to its environment In
WC&6 each her of this 70 mi Ixr
is an example of the survival of the tittest.
Break open the rose-hip and you will
ind several tiny seeds. Plant them and
you will have other rosebushes.
But in the early days there were none to
plant and none to gather. The rose had
TO propagate itself according to its best
ability. So the green hips, when ripe.
turned red. The bright color attracted the
birds, who ate the red fruit and dissent
mated the seeds. These took root and
multiplied upon the earth Some fell upon
stony ground and bore hips and haws as
before; some fell in the rich alluvial soil
of the valleys and became improved by
the change; others were borne to far
away lands, where all the conditions were
different.
Thus the family was broken UP and
separated. The flowers, the leaves, the
order OF growth all bespeak a common
stock, and one great characteristic of the
eHllTe IdIllly is the tendency 10 produce
tieshy receptacle for its seeds. We saw
this in the hard red hip of the dog-rose.
We see il in the delicious white ''fruit' of
the nectarine.
but the fruits differ widely. First. be-
cause of natural selection; second, through
artificial selection on the part of man.
Something in the soil and the surround
ings where the seed fell produced from the
rose seed the primitive cherry. In the be-
ginning those cherries that were brightest
and most attractive in color caught the
eyes of the creatures, birds and small
arboreal animals, that ate them. When
the cherries were eaten the pits were scat
tered abroad. These produced their kind
They intensified the tendency to redness
and attractiveness. The green, the hard.
the unattractive drupes did not get eaten
nor scattered, and so did not reproduce
their kind so freely. So the general ten
dency was to improvement
Climatic influences were also at work. In
the colder northern chimes the seeds had a
smaller chance for life. So, following
law of nature that holds in every form of
life, greater provision was made for repro
duction. The apple, the pear and the
ounce have numerous seeds where the
plum the peach and the apricot have but
one. These seeds, too, are encased in a
much warmer protective covering, swol-
len mass of the fruit stalks, the better to
Withstand the frostS that ripen and mellow
the outside envelope and make it juicy and
attractive for the distributing birds and
creatures that devour it.
For this outer envelope which we call
fruit is not the fruit at all. 1t is only a
receptacle for the fruit which is hidden
away in its heart, and to save and dis
tribute which the tree or vine expends much
energy and vitality in producing these soft
blankets.
Sometimes these blankets are made the
reverse of attractive, as in the case of the
almond. By some chance fortune it came
about that the pit of the almond, which is
just as truly pit as is the stone of the
peach or the plum, drew from its surround
ings that which made it, instead of bitter
and poisonous, like the others, sweet and
toothsome. 1t was good to eat, and preda-
ceous creatures soon found it out So the
attractiveness which was the reproductive
salvation of the cherry, for instance, be-
came the destruction of the almond. Those
nuts fairest to look upon were seen and
eaten. The green, hard, unattractive ones
alone were left. These did not get very
widely distributed, and they only grew in
very favoring places. They relied upon
the wind and the chances that rolled them
about, but they did reproduce their kind
which was extremely green and hard and
bitter with q cOmDaratiyelv hard inner