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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 5, 1956)
0 1 o O EIGHT MEDFORD (OREGOTn MAIL TRIBUNE Wednesday. December 5. 1956 O o o Is That So? O Now is the tme that iiie spark O of l.fe within tne seed is dormant sleeping. And have you ever (pthoirzht that if this commonplace miracle did not happen each year, man could have no stored crops sur-h- as Corn, wheat or rice? Ami without sifch stored crop?, where would civilized man be? Perhaps still in the caves. Originally, of course, there wei another purpose in this sleeping, and-still is: it provides forMhe plant's own self preser vation. Should the seeds from ' By EUGENE BURNS , , Ranger-Naturalist introduced from North America, Chile and the Mediterranean lands. And before that? As for one of our worst pests, the Russian thi?tle, it came from' Europe into li is country in some j uaxseea wnicn naa oeen sown ! io South Dakota, in 1386. Thanks' to the wind carrying the whole plant when its 'seeds are ripe j and. turrrbhng .them over many miles, the thistle spread over 16 o o rt-J-s guch tenderplants sprout in"th fall upon ripening, the winter cold might well kill all the plants. AncP poof. Ready now to consider somt other oeed wonders, common place as oicy- are? . O The pollen ef the forget-nie- not, Hie me-tyving num Qthich the 5ecd results, is so small trSt 6M0 grains measure only one inch0And yet this tiny flecjj contains tne "plant's age Old history! And determines its future. , PoJlen from pine trees some fi?ne9 caftriw to other pines 400 milts avway. - s feounton it: the most bright n !v colored and fragrant flowers U G5y usually pollinated by insects such as bees, butterflies and q O wai which can see in eolor and ' have rtp acute sense of smell. Nature ren goes to gieat Olrnzths to make sure that, her 0 plants are cross-pollinated. For examp'ecUi th"t geranium the tips rr the ps ripen Deiore the stamans so the psllen will ,n,ot fertiftee pistils ot the same nwerobut must be carried to other tfr.i older blossoms with Distils at "the rigUt stage to re ceive themMn lhejfif?wort the rorgss is reversed the stamens are really before the pistils. The primrose has yet" another meth od: it has flowers of two types O in one, th pfctils are long and O the Stamens short; in the other the stflrnehs are, long ad the pis tils short. That makes it harder rjor the pollp'ii to reach the pistil of &e same Xlower. ... u Pollen From Other Apple " Some apple tcees to get fruit, such as the Spjtzenburg, must O Qiave the pollen from other ap- O P!- Sllcn as Baldwin or Jona tlbro 0 O To hold their own irt this fiercely competitive plant' life, some-plants produce a million seeds a yearo Others, 'more as sured, likerjhe coconyts. .seHo'm have more than a hundred. Sheepccan be great spreaders Qif weeds, good and bad. For ex ample: In England, farmers couldn't undcstsBEd where the strge twcPdozen and more dif ferent kinds of eeds were com ing from in a neighbor s' field. Upon questioning, they found he had experimented with a waste q wool fertilizer fxom Yorkshire mills. The wo had come from Austria andchad to be cleaned b$ire spun into cloth. In the raw tvool were tiny T5rs and wcd seeds that had got langiea-ona inese were in me aste the farmer had put on his field. Anyone woifld say this halfway round the world trip was a long joumeyJjut it was jusP:e beginning. Most of those seer came from plants which in turn had been brought to Aus tria by oyier heep who were o o o f,0 SI "O Poriland-Ellensburg us Service Restored Portland ;U.R) Northwest Greyhound line :Taesday issued a statement which aid service betwcencf'or0and and Ellens- biiis. Wash., rm the, line had been restored. The firm dechned ,-. to eborate. Aeport yesterday said driv es o9 that division had pleaded q illness and failed to show up for work. Service betweera Portland O and Salt Lake City' is still dis rupted cdue to a walkout of drivers. "J ,0 Te total area of Minnesota lis 54.943.579 acresxit which 3.602,- 210 are of water, mostly in more. than 11 000 lakes. o o o o O O iJlever Girl' o . " stops coughing all night o G o q When coughs foTIowiTig a, cold threaten to ruin her night's Vest o -: and tar down her strength she slways takes Creomuision .Coufch Srrnp. Creonolsjo'n . r?nrit5 restful sleep because it. stops the tickle, comforts .raw throat mem branes, c Tears breathing pas sages, relates teBsioii.lt woHcs hard and fast to bring sou wel- m r 0 oP'""' gr 4 H o o K ' ' co : V '1 ly. ' o ;? :f j states within a year. Today the i Russian thistle is a pest in most of western America. The seeds are also carried in hay, feeds, and sacks of crop seeds. ' Disseminates Seeds I One evening primrose dissem , inates its seeds by self-propul-; sion. (Disseminate, incidentally, ! comes from two words "dis" ; which means in all directions, fand "semen," which means seed, j Therefore to scatter seed.) ! When dry, this evening prim j rose ' keeps its seed capsules I closed. But when wet, they open ! ! quickly and take on a cup shape. ! Then when a drop of water hits'! j the cup-shape quite hard, the ; seeds are scattered quite far. ; Far enough, at any rate, to i amount to hundreds of miles in the course of tens of thousands of years. ! The "foresiehted" cocklebur J of lowly ancestry contains two j seeds in the bur. One half is soft i ! so that that seed can sprout eas-1 j'ily the . following spring. The other half is tougher and the seed 'within is protected for an added year or more. Thus the clinging cocklebur, which has to gamble on passersby for a hitch-hike, has increased its chances of sur viving. Not dumb. (Copyright, 1956, By Eugene Burns Released by McCiure Newspaper Syndicate) Free: By special arrangement with the editors of the Encyclo-' pedia Americana, my panel of judges will award each week to the reader who sends me the best true-life nature adventure, the best nature observation, or the best question on nature and wildlife, a complete 30-volume set of this world-famous refer ence work-In a. handsome Seal craft binding. Each week new submissions . will be considered. Sorry, I simply can't answer your many friendly letters. Please address your letters to: Is That .So! co Medford Mail Tribune, Box 575, Saiisalito, Calif. .' Sawdust Telephone 2-2111 MEDFORD FUEL 00. SEV Ejr&ON'S CANDIES "Order Your Holiday Boxes o of ndy Now! 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