Then the petals fall, the seed cup closes and swells, the sepals dry into five little brown scales at the flower end. The apple grows big and juicy, and ripens brown seeds in five satin-horn lined nests in the heart.
The crown-bearers do not use their own pollen, but exchange it with flowers on other trees of the same kind. Such a flutter of silken, scented petticoats; such a buzzing of bees and hovering of butterflies as goes on in those huge bouquets of pink and white! Beside what we call the wild fruit trees—all trees and low plants, too, bear fruits, for fruits are seeds, you know—there are the honey locusts, the horse chestnut and buckeye trees, and many crown-flowering shrubs, in American forests.
The honey locusts hang out long clusters of pink butterfly blossoms, like nosegays of little sweet peas. The honey bees go frantic with delight over them. In June, the horse chestnut gives its second surprise party of the year. Don't miss that for anything. You can find these handsome trees in lawns, parks and along village streets.
The swollen cone of the horse chestnut flower bud is in the heart of a cluster of five-fingered leaves, often a foot long and broad. The big white blossoms are on erect, many-branched spikes, so they form a giant bouquet. Each blossom is a fluttery, ruflfly cup, penciled and dotted with purple and yellow. They are deep honey pots, into which bees tumble, head first, jostling the hanging pollen pockets and bumping into seed column tips. When the petals fall in a little snow storm, the seed grow in husks, into dark brown nuts, much like big, flattened acorns. The horse chestnut is a foreign cousin of the American buckeye tree. The Ohio buckeye that gives its name to the state, has clusters of smaller greenish flowers, and the sweet buckeye long, narrow, yellow flowers in green cups.
Under the lowest limbs of the tall forest trees are the flowering shrubs. The wild briar berries have clusters of white rose-like blossoms. There are bouquets of white-flowered dogwoods, pink sprays of red-bud, and yellow torches of the spice bush. The elder shrubs have showy parasols of tiny white blossoms, and the laurel makes banks and drifts of pink snow on rough hillsides.
This is the forest in flower, as the Indian boy knew it. Do you wonder that he loved it? If you learn to know it and love it as he did, it will call you out every day from March to June.
