“It’s a wonderful story,” Bouncing Bet spoke in her sweet voice. “You see, the plant food soup is carried up into the larger roots, into the sapwood of the tree, into the branches and into the leaves; and the leaves——”
“Give us shade!” Eleanor did not realize that she had interrupted.
“They do,” smiled Bet. “But that is not their work.”
“Oh, do leaves work?” Eleanor was surprised.
“They work very, very hard,” Bet replied. “They do such wonderful work that a leaf has been called a leaf factory, or a leaf-mill.”
“You think that leaves do not resemble the factories or mills you have seen,” went on the fairy. “It is not in appearance that they resemble mills and factories, but in the work they do; for they manufacture starch. I suppose there is really no starch in the whole world that leaves have not made.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Mary Frances; “even the starch in our dresses—is that made by leaves?”
“Yes,” Bet smiled, “even that; and the starch in your bread and the——”
“Tell them the story, Bet,” said Jack, who was much interested.
“All right,” answered the little fairy, turning to pick a leaf from the magic tree. “Please do not interrupt, and I will tell you about—
Nothing can grow without the right kind of food.
Plants cannot use the “plant-food soup,” just as it is taken up by the roots, to make new growth.
The leaves must first turn the liquid food into _starch_, which is the right kind of food for the plant.
A leaf has been called a leaf-mill, because it has many tiny grinding stones.
These tiny grinding stones are the green grains in the cells which form the leaf. They are called _chlor-o-phyll_ bodies.
The leaf-mill grinding stones are turned by sunshine power. Without sunshine they cannot work.
By the leaf-mill grinding stones, a gas from the air (carbonic acid gas) is mixed with the plant food soup sent up by the plant’s roots, and starch is formed.
While doing the work of manufacturing starch, the leaf-mill throws off into the air another gas, called oxygen. Oxygen is needed by all animals; carbonic acid gas (or carbon dioxide) is needed by all plants whose leaves make starch.
But even the starch must be changed before the plant can use it to make new growth. It must be made into sugar!