Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/81

Rh me as more than "stickers." I have discovered an old friend among them. Withered and brown, I should scarcely have recognized the friend of my springtime rambles but for a certain odor of the roots and a sprig of young green leaves by the side of the old, dry stalk. It all comes back now—sweet cicely of the spring woods with its umbels of white blossoms and that sweet, anise like smell of its roots. To discover an old friend in a strange guise is enough in itself to whet one's interest, and I have curiosity to know how sweet cicely fares in the undertime of the year. All through the woods I find the dry, leafless stalks of the plant adorned with slender, black seed-pods that cling in pairs to the delicate pedicels of the umbel clusters. Under a magnifying lens each pod reveals a structure of wonderful design, the sole purpose of which is to fasten on to any object that may brush past. To this intent it is furnished with delicate hooks, arranged in parallel lines along its sides, lying close against the pod and pointing back from its free end. The free end of the pod tapers into a slender style armed with the same hook like structures, so that whatever part is touched it will be sure to cling fast.

Another umbelwort, the fruit of which catches on to the clothes in our autumn woodland walks, is sanicle or black snakeroot. We come upon it in the undergrowth of hillsides and in the dry woods of the uplands with its small, brown burs bunched in clusters on the ends of the branching stem. It grows scarcely higher than one's knees, and in the tangled mass of brown and green is often passed unnoticed. Each little bur presents an array of minute hooked bristles, set closely together, and forming a most effective means for attachment to the hairy covering of animals.

The various species of Desmodium, or tick trefoil of the pulse tribe, are among the most persistent "stickers" of the October woods. The flattened, several-lobed pods are more familiar to us as clinging in detached lobes to our clothes after coming out of the