redwoods of California are cone-bearers, too. They all have straight-grained, soft wood, and bear their seeds in scaly cones. Each hard, woody scale of a pine cone bears a pair of naked seeds. These seeds are one-leafed, like a grain of corn. That is, the new plant grows from one side of the seed. In higher plants, like peas and beans, the seed split into two leaves.
The palm, in some ways, is simpler than the pine. It has less bark, and its stem does not branch. Its bark often seems to be mere bundles of loose, dry fibres left by leaves that fell as the stem grew upward. These leaf scales are easily stripped off, and the fibres are so long and strong that they can be woven and twisted. They hint at true bark. The flowers of palms are borne on a fleshy spike at the top, between the cluster of feathery leaves. They are small and green, as in the pines, and do not look like flowers at all. The seeds of palms and pines form very much as they do in the fern, but the little whip-lash turns into yellow grains of pollen. The making of pollen was a big step forward. Pollen grains can be carried like dust on the wind, to more distant plants. Sometimes, in the desert, the pollen of date palms hover like a yellow mist over the trees. You can see this yellow dust in pine woods in the spring. It has a spicy smell.
The pines and the palms are very useful to men. The pines furnish many building woods, tar, turpentine, resins and gums. The palms furnish food in dates, cocoanuts, sago (a starchy pith), sugar, oil from palm nuts and cocoanuts, dyes, gums, building material and fibres. In pines and palms, nature made plants of very much longer life than she had ever made before. Some giant red-woods of California are known to be hundreds of years old. The highest of the cone-bearers have very strong, thick bark and show rings of yearly growth in their wood.
Next, nature began to cover her seeds. The seeds were still single leafed, and the leaves straight-veined. She began to make ribbon-like leaves growing at regular distances on stems. Any little grass plant is an example. How many ribbon-leafed plants can you think of? Wheat, oats, rye, rice—yes, all the cereal grains, from grasses to the tall, wide, banner-bladed corn stalk. Sugar cane belongs to this family, and your bamboo fishing pole. Water flags, rushes and cat-tails belong to it, too, and onions, lilies and other bulb plants. In the bulb plants the stems are crowded into round fleshy crowns that are often buried. And they bear beautiful flowers.
