Proserpina Volume I Part 12

I must go and look, and can write no more to-day; nor to-morrow neither. I must gather slowly what I see, and remember; and meantime leaving, to be dealt with afterwards, the difficult and quite separate question of the production of _wood_, I will close this first volume of Proserpina with some necessary statements respecting the operations, serviceable to other creatures than themselves, in which the lives of the n.o.blest plants are ended: honourable in this service equally, though evanescent, some,--in the pa.s.sing of a breeze--or the dying of a day;--and patient some, of storm and time, serene in fruitful sanct.i.ty, through all the uncounted ages which Man has polluted with his tears.

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CHAPTER XIII.

THE SEED AND HUSK.

1. Not the least sorrowful, nor least absurd of the confusions brought on us by unscholarly botanists, blundering into foreign languages, when they do not know how to use their own, is that which has followed on their practice of calling the seed-vessels of flowers 'egg-vessels,'[65] in Latin; thus involving total loss of the power of the good old English word 'husk,' and the good old French one, 'cosse.' For all the treasuries of plants (see Chapter IV., -- 17) may be best conceived, and described, generally, as consisting of 'seed' and 'husk,'--for the most part two or more seeds, in a husk composed of two or more parts, as pease in their sh.e.l.l, pips in an orange, or kernels in a walnut; but whatever their number, or the method of their enclosure, let the student keep clear in his mind, for the base of all study of fructification, the broad distinction between the seed, as one thing, and the husk as another: the seed, essential to the continuance of the plant's race; and the husk, {220} adapted, primarily, to its guard and dissemination; but secondarily, to quite other and far more important functions.

2. For on this distinction follows another practical one of great importance. A seed may serve, and many do mightily serve, for the food of man, when boiled, crushed, or otherwise industriously prepared by man himself, for his mere _sustenance_. But the _husk_ of the seed is prepared in many cases for the delight of his eyes, and the pleasure of his palate, by Nature herself, and is then called a 'fruit.'

3. The varieties of structure both in seed and husk, and yet more, the manner in which the one is contained, and distributed by, the other, are infinite; and in some cases the husk is apparently wanting, or takes some unrecognizable form. But in far the plurality of instances the two parts of the plant's treasury are easily distinguishable, and must be separately studied, whatever their apparent closeness of relation, or, (as in all natural things,) the equivocation sometimes taking place between the one and the other. To me, the especially curious point in this matter is that, while I find the most elaborate accounts given by botanists of the stages of growth in each of these parts of the treasury, they never say of what use the guardian is to the guarded part, irrespective of its service to man. The mechanical action of the husk in containing and scattering the seeds, they indeed often notice and insist on; but they do not tell {221} us of what, if any, nutritious or fostering use the rind is to a chestnut, or an orange's pulp to its pips, or a peach's juice to its stone.

4. Putting aside this deeper question for the moment, let us make sure we understand well, and define safely, the separate parts themselves. A seed consists essentially of a store, or sack, containing substance to nourish a germ of life, which is surrounded by such substance, and in the process of growth is first fed by it. The germ of life itself rises into two portions, and not more than two, in the seeds of two-leaved plants; but this symmetrical dualism must not be allowed to confuse the student's conception, of the _three_ organically separate parts,--the tough skin of a bean, for instance; the softer contents of it which we boil to eat; and the small germ from which the root springs when it is sown. A bean is the best type of the whole structure. An almond out of its sh.e.l.l, a peach-kernel, and an apple-pip are also clear and perfect, though varied types.

5. The husk, or seed-vessel, is seen in perfect simplicity of type in the pod of a bean, or the globe of a poppy. There are, I believe, flowers in which it is absent or imperfect; and when it contains only one seed, it may be so small and closely united with the seed it contains, that both will be naturally thought of as one thing only. Thus, in a dandelion, the little brown grains, which may be blown away, each with its silken parachute, are every one of them a complete husk and {222} seed together. But the majority of instances (and those of plants the most serviceable to man) in which the seed-vessel has entirely a separate structure and mechanical power, justify us in giving it the normal term 'husk,' as the most widely applicable and intelligible.

6. The change of green, hard, and tasteless vegetable substance into beautifully coloured, soft, and delicious substance, which produces what we call a fruit, is, in most cases, of the husk only; in others, of the part of the stalk which immediately sustains the seed; and in a very few instances, not properly a change, but a distinct formation, of fruity substance between the husk and seed. Normally, however, the husk, like the seed, consists always of three parts; it has an outer skin, a central substance of peculiar nature, and an inner skin, which holds the seed. The main difficulty, in describing or thinking of the completely ripened product of any plant, is to discern clearly which is the inner skin of the husk, and which the outer skin of the seed. The peach is in this respect the best general type,--the woolly skin being the outer one of the husk; the part we eat, the central substance of the husk; and the hard sh.e.l.l of the stone, the inner skin of the husk. The bitter kernel within is the seed.

7. In this case, and in the plum and cherry, the two parts under present examination--husk and seed--separate naturally; the fruity part, which is the body of the husk, adhering firmly to the sh.e.l.l, which is its inner {223} coat. But in the walnut and almond, the two outer parts of the husk separate from the interior one, which becomes an apparently independent 'sh.e.l.l.' So that when first I approached this subject I divided the general structure of a treasury into _three_ parts--husk, sh.e.l.l, and kernel; and this division, when we once have mastered the main one, will be often useful. But at first let the student keep steadily to his conception of the two constant parts, husk and seed, reserving the idea of sh.e.l.ls and kernels for one group of plants only.

8. It will not be always without difficulty that he maintains the distinction, when the tree pretends to have changed it. Thus, in the chestnut, the inner coat of the husk becomes brown, adheres to the seed, and seems part of it; and we naturally call only the thick, green, p.r.i.c.kly coat, the husk. But this is only one of the deceiving tricks of Nature, to compel our attention more closely. The real place of separation, to _her_ mind, is between the mahogany-coloured sh.e.l.l and the nut itself, and that more or less silky and flossy coating within the brown sh.e.l.l is the true lining of the entire 'husk.' The paler brown skin, following the rugosities of the nut, is the true sack or skin of the seed. Similarly in the walnut and almond.

9. But, in the apple, two new tricks are played us. First, in the brown skin of the ripe pip, we might imagine we saw the part correspondent to the mahogany skin of the chestnut, and therefore the inner coat of the {224} husk. But it is not so. The brown skin of the pips belongs to them properly, and is all their own. It is the true skin or sack of the seed.

The inner coat of the husk is the smooth, white, scaly part of the core that holds them.

Then,--for trick number two. We should as naturally imagine the skin of the apple, which we peel off, to be correspondent to the skin of the peach; and therefore, to be the outer part of the husk. But not at all. The outer part of the husk in the apple is melted away into the fruity ma.s.s of it, and the red skin outside is the skin of its _stalk_, not of its seed-vessel at all!

10. I say 'of its stalk,'--that is to say, of the part of the stalk immediately sustaining the seed, commonly called the torus, and expanding into the calyx. In the apple, this torus incorporates itself with the husk completely; then refines its own external skin, and colours _that_ variously and beautifully, like the true skin of the husk in the peach, while the withered leaves of the calyx remain in the 'eye' of the apple.

But in the 'hip' of the rose, the incorporation with the husk of the seed does not take place. The torus, or,--as in this flower from its peculiar form it is called,--the tube of the calyx, alone forms the frutescent part of the hip; and the complete seeds, husk and all, (the firm triangular husk enclosing an almond-shaped kernel,) are grouped closely in its interior cavity, while the calyx remains on the top in a large and scarcely withering star. {225} In the nut, the calyx remains green and beautiful, forming what we call the husk of a filbert; and again we find Nature amusing herself by trying to make us think that this strict envelope, almost closing over the single seed, is the same thing to the nut that its green sh.e.l.l is to a walnut!

11. With still more capricious masquing, she varies and hides the structure of her 'berries.'

The strawberry is a hip turned inside-out, the frutescent receptacle changed into a scarlet ball, or cone, of crystalline and delicious coral, in the outside of which the separate seeds, husk and all, are imbedded. In the raspberry and blackberry, the interior mound remains sapless; and the rubied translucency of dulcet substance is formed round each separate seed, _upon_ its husk; not a part of the husk, but now an entirely independent and added portion of the plant's bodily form.

12. What is thus done for each seed, on the _out_side of the receptacle, in the raspberry, is done for each seed, _in_side the calyx, in a pomegranate; which is a hip in which the seeds have become surrounded with a radiant juice, richer than claret wine; while the seed itself, within the generous jewel, is succulent also, and spoken of by Tournefort as a "baie succulente." The tube of the calyx, brown-russet like a large hip, externally, is yet otherwise divided, and separated wholly from the cinque-foiled, and cinque-celled rose, both in number of petal and division of treasuries; the calyx has eight points, and nine cells. {226}

13. Lastly, in the orange, the fount of fragrant juice is interposed between the seed and the husk. It is wholly independent of both; the Aurantine rind, with its white lining and divided compartments, is the true husk; the orange pips are the true seeds; and the eatable part of the fruit is formed between them, in cl.u.s.ters of delicate little flasks, as if a fairy's store of scented wine had been laid up by her in the hollow of a chestnut sh.e.l.l, between the nut and rind; and then the green changed to gold.

14. I have said '_lastly_'--of the orange, for fear of the reader's weariness only; not as having yet represented, far less exhausted, the variety of frutescent form. But these are the most important types of it; and before I can explain the relation between these, and another, too often confounded with them--the _granular_ form of the seed of gra.s.ses.--I must give some account of what, to man, is far more important than the form--the gift to him in fruit-food; and trial, in fruit-temptation.

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CHAPTER XIV.

THE FRUIT GIFT.

1. In the course of the preceding chapter, I hope that the reader has obtained, or may by a little patience both obtain and secure, the idea of a great natural Ordinance, which, in the protection given to the part of plants necessary to prolong their race, provides, for happier living creatures, food delightful to their taste, and forms either amusing or beautiful to their eyes. Whether in receptacle, calyx, or true husk,--in the cup of the acorn, the fringe of the filbert, the down of the apricot, or bloom of the plum, the powers of Nature consult quite other ends than the mere continuance of oaks and plum trees on the earth; and must be regarded always with grat.i.tude more deep than wonder, when they are indeed seen with human eyes and human intellect.

2. But in one family of plants, the _contents_ also of the seed, not the envelope of it merely, are prepared for the support of the higher animal life; and their grain, filled with the substance which, for universally understood name, may best keep the Latin one of Farina,--becoming in French, 'Farine,' and in English, 'Flour,'--both in the perfectly nourishing elements of it, and its {228} easy and abundant multiplicability, becomes the primal treasure of human economy.

3. It has been the practice of botanists of all nations to consider the seeds of the gra.s.ses together with those of roses and pease, as if all could be described on the same principles, and with the same nomenclature of parts. But the grain of corn is a quite distinct thing from the seed of pease. In _it_, the husk and the seed envelope have become inextricably one. All the exocarps, endocarps, epicarps, mesocarps, sh.e.l.ls, husks, sacks, and skins, are woven at once together into the brown bran; and inside of that, a new substance is collected for us, which is not what we boil in pease, or poach in eggs, or munch in nuts, or grind in coffee;--but a thing which, mixed with water and then baked, has given to all the nations of the world their prime word for food, in thought and prayer,--Bread; their prime conception of the man's and woman's labor in preparing it--("whoso putteth hand to the _plough_"--two women shall be grinding at the _mill_)--their prime notion of the means of cooking by fire--("which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the _oven_"), and their prime notion of culinary office--the "chief _baker_," cook, or pastrycook,--(compare Bedreddin Ha.s.san in the Arabian Nights): and, finally, to modern civilization, the Saxon word 'lady,' with whatever it imports.

4. It has also been the practice of botanists to confuse all the ripened products of plants under the general term {229} 'fruit.' But the essential and separate fruit-gift is of two substances, quite distinct from flour, namely, oil and wine, under the last term including for the moment all kinds of juice which will produce alcohol by fermentation. Of these, oil may be produced either in the kernels of nuts, as in almonds, or in the substance of berries, as in the olive, date, and coffee-berry. But the sweet juice which will become medicinal in wine, can only be developed in the husk, or in the receptacle.

5. The office of the Chief Butler, as opposed to that of the Chief Baker, and the office of the Good Samaritan, pouring in oil and wine, refer both to the total fruit-gift in both kinds: but in the study of plants, we must primarily separate our notion of their gifts to men into the three elements, flour, oil, and wine; and have instantly and always intelligible names for them in Latin, French, and English.

And I think it best not to confuse our ideas of pure vegetable substance with the possible process of fermentation:--so that rather than 'wine,' for a constant specific term, I will take 'Nectar,'--this term more rightly including the juices of the peach, nectarine, and plum, as well as those of the grape, currant, and apple.

Our three separate substances will then be easily named in all three languages:

Farina. Oleum. Nectar.

Farine. Huile. Nectare.

Flour. Oil. Nectar.

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There is this farther advantage in keeping the third common term, that it leaves us the words Succus, Jus, Juice, for other liquid products of plants, watery, milky, sugary, or resinous,--often indeed important to man, but often also without either agreeable flavor or nutritious power; and it is therefore to be observed with care that we may use the word 'juice,' of a liquid produced by any part of a plant, but 'nectar,' only of the juices produced in its fruit.

6. But the good and pleasure of fruit is not in the juice only;--in some kinds, and those not the least valuable, (as the date,) it is not in the juice at all. We still stand absolutely in want of a word to express the more or less firm _substance_ of fruit, as distinguished from all other products of a plant. And with the usual ill-luck,--(I advisedly think of it as demoniacal misfortune)--of botanical science, no other name has been yet used for such substance than the entirely false and ugly one of 'Flesh,'--Fr., 'Chair,' with its still more painful derivation 'Charnu,'

and in England the monstrous scientific term, 'Sarco-carp.'

But, under the housewifery of Proserpina, since we are to call the juice of fruit, Nectar, its substance will be as naturally and easily called Ambrosia; and I have no doubt that this, with the other names defined in this chapter, will not only be found practically more convenient than the phrases in common use, but will more securely fix in the student's mind a true conception of {231} the essential differences in substance, which, ultimately, depend wholly on their pleasantness to human perception, and offices for human good; and not at all on any otherwise explicable structure or faculty. It is of no use to determine, by microscope or retort, that cinnamon is made of cells with so many walls, or grape-juice of molecules with so many sides;--we are just as far as ever from understanding why these particular interstices should be aromatic, and these special parallelopipeds exhilarating, as we were in the savagely unscientific days when we could only see with our eyes, and smell with our noses. But to call each of these separate substances by a name rightly belonging to it through all the past variations of the language of educated man, will probably enable us often to discern powers in the thing itself, of affecting the human body and mind, which are indeed qualities infinitely more its _own_, than any which can possibly be extracted by the point of a knife, or brayed out with a mortar and pestle.

7. Thus, to take merely instance in the three main elements of which we have just determined the names,--flour, oil, and ambrosia;--the differences in the kinds of pleasure which the tongue received from the powderiness of oat-cake, or a well-boiled potato--(in the days when oat-cake and potatoes were!)--from the glossily-softened crispness of a well-made salad, and from the cool and fragrant amber of an apricot, are indeed distinctions between the essential virtues of things which {232} were made to be _tasted_, much more than to be eaten; and in their various methods of ministry to, and temptation of, human appet.i.tes, have their part in the history, not of elements merely, but of souls; and of the soul-virtues, which from the beginning of the world have bade the barrel of meal not waste, nor the cruse of oil fail; and have planted, by waters of comfort, the fruits which are for the healing of nations.

8. And, again, therefore, I must repeat, with insistance, the claim I have made for the limitation of language to the use made of it by educated men.

The word 'carp' could never have multiplied itself into the absurdities of endo-carps and epi-carps, but in the mouths of men who scarcely ever read it in its original letters, and therefore never recognized it as meaning precisely the same thing as 'fructus,' which word, being a little more familiar with, they would have scarcely abused to the same extent; they would not have called a walnut sh.e.l.l an intra-fruct--or a grape skin an extra-fruct; but again, because, though they are accustomed to the English 'fructify,' 'frugivorous'--and 'usufruct,' they are unaccustomed to the Latin 'fruor,' and unconscious therefore that the derivative 'fructus' must always, in right use, mean an _enjoyed_ thing, they generalize every mature vegetable product under the term; and we find Dr. Gray coolly telling us that there is no fruit so "likely to be mistaken for a seed," as a grain of corn! a grain, whether of corn, or any other {233} gra.s.s, being precisely the vegetable structure to which frutescent change is forever forbidden!

and to which the word _seed_ is primarily and perfectly applicable!--the thing to be _sown_, not grafted.

9. But to mark this total incapability of frutescent change, and connect the form of the seed more definitely with its dusty treasure, it is better to reserve, when we are speaking with precision, the term 'grain' for the seeds of the gra.s.ses: the difficulty is greater in French than in English: because they have no monosyllabic word for the constantly granular 'seed'; but for us the terms are all simple, and already in right use, only not quite clearly enough understood; and there remains only one real difficulty now in our system of nomenclature, that having taken the word 'husk' for the seed-vessel, we are left without a general word for the true fringe of a filbert, or the chaff of a gra.s.s. I don't know whether the French 'frange' could be used by them in this sense, if we took it in English botany. But for the present, we can manage well enough without it, one general term, 'chaff,' serving for all the gra.s.ses, 'cup' for acorns, and 'fringe' for nuts.

10. But I call this a _real_ difficulty, because I suppose, among the myriads of plants of which I know nothing, there may be forms of the envelope of fruits or seeds which may, for comfort of speech, require some common generic name. One _un_real difficulty, or shadow of difficulty, remains in our having no entirely comprehensive {234} name for seed and seed-vessel together than that the botanists now use, 'fruit.' But practically, even now, people feel that they can't gather figs of thistles, and never speak of the fructification of a thistle, or of the fruit of a dandelion. And, re-a.s.sembling now, in one view, the words we have determined on, they will be found enough for all practical service, and in such service always accurate, and, usually, suggestive. I repeat them in brief order, with such farther explanation as they need.

11. All ripe products of the life of flowers consist essentially of the Seed and Husk,--these being, in certain cases, sustained, surrounded, or provided with means of motion, by other parts of the plant; or by developments of their own form which require in each case distinct names.

Thus the white cushion of the dandelion to which its brown seeds are attached, and the personal parachutes which belong to each, must be separately described for that species of plants; it is the little brown thing they sustain and carry away on the wind, which must be examined as the essential product of the floret;--the 'seed and husk.'

12. Every seed has a husk, holding either that seed alone, or other seeds with it.

Every perfect seed consists of an embryo, and the substance which first nourishes that embryo; the whole enclosed in a sack or other sufficient envelope. Three essential parts altogether. {235}

Every perfect husk, vulgarly pericarp, or 'round-fruit,'--(as periwig, 'round-wig,')--consists of a sh.e.l.l, (vulgarly endocarp,) rind, (vulgarly mesocarp,) and skin, (vulgarly epicarp); three essential parts altogether.

But one or more of these parts may be effaced, or confused with another; and in the seeds of gra.s.ses they all concentrate themselves into bran.