partition between them. But they are joined across the middle like Siamese twins.
You can make a very close guess as to what the fruit of many trees will look like by studying the blossoms that hold the little eggs. You know the sweet, three-cornered little nuts of the beech tree, don't you? The squirrels know them. Three nuts are fitted together in the husk, so, in the egg blossom, which is just a tiny grain, there are three little, three-cornered mouths to be fed. The pollen blossom is a globe-shaped bell, with a dozen powder-tipped threads.
What would you think the blossom of the wild grape should look like? A many-branched cluster of flowers, for one thing. The flowers have five petals and five pollen threads, and a many-celled egg cup for the many seeds of the grape. But the flower petals do not flare open. They are almost closed into little grape shaped globes around the seed-making parts. The flower stalk, with ever so many branches and separate flowers on it, may be only an inch or two long, but it is a whole baby bunch of grapes.
Do you notice that the grape has both of its flowers, the seed cup and the pollen threads, set in one blossom? This is the first one of the kind we have found. The catkin bearers, the maples, the elms and all the nut trees have two kinds of flowers. One is a pollen maker that falls as soon as the yellow food is scattered. The other is an egg blossom that is fed, and stays on the tree awhile to ripen the seeds. In the grape, the two flowers are brought together, and set in a five-petaled cup, or ball.
The same is true of the wild crabapple and hawthorn trees of the woods. Plants with these united flowers are called crown-bearers. They are of a higher order than those that have to make two kinds of blossoms to grow seed. The crabapple blossom is so large that you can find out just how it is put together. The stem ends of all the parts are packed in a solid green cup that swells out on the end of the stalk. In that cup are little eggs in five nests. Growing up from the nests are five, hollow, white columns with moist, spongy buttons on top. Around these columns is circle after circle of yellow-tipped pollen threads, as many as thirty of them. And outside of these is the rosette of five pink petals, held up by the five green sepal scales, or flaring lips of the egg cup.
Bees brush the yellow pollen onto the white columns, and the grains of gold-dust send hair-like roots down to the little seed eggs.
