自然の驚異
昨年の６月だったか、徳重図書館のプランターに咲いていた菜の花が枯れて七八個の黄色い鞘をつけていた。鞘は極小エンドウというか、エンドウの赤ちゃんのようで、長さ２センチ、幅１ミリぐらい。鞘の中に黒ゴマのような種が３つか４つ入っていた。鞘から一ダースぐらいの種を採って保管しておき、去年の１２月ごろ庭に蒔いた。１０日ぐらいたつと芽が出てきた。あんな小さな種から芽が出てきて驚いた。その後、芽は小さな葉になり、葉が成長して、高さ２０センチぐらいの葉を７、８枚つけた。
その後、葉の数は増え、大きくなっていったが、菜の花らしきつぼみができず、「これは一体菜の花なのか」と疑問に思った。画像ネットで調べると、葉っぱだけの菜の花の写真があり、「食用菜の花」と書いてあった。そうか、食用かと思ったが、徳重の菜の花はちゃんと黄色い花をつけていた。様子を見ていると、２週間後の１月中旬に小さな蕾が葉っぱの中心部にできていた。約一週間後、蕾が開き、小さな黄色い花を幾つか咲かせた。それから花はどんどん大きくなり、立派になり、写真のようになった。
あんな小さなゴマ粒のような種がこのように大きく立派に成長したことに驚き、自然の力の凄さを実感した。
Wonder of Nature
When I went
to Tokushige Library last June, I saw several dried-up mustard plants in the plastic
flower pots. Each of them bore a few tiny pea pods on the stems. They looked
like pea pod babies, about 2 centimeter-long and 1 millimeter wide. Inside them
were a few seeds as small as black sesames. I collected the seeds and kept them
till last December, when I sowed them in a flower bed in my garden. About 10
days later, I saw tiny green buds. I was moved to see them that had come from
such tiny seeds. The buds became larger and larger and grew into large leaves.
The mustard plants grew as high as more than 20 centimeters.
Then, the
number of leaves increased. Although the leaves became larger and larger, I did
not see any sign of flower buds. I wondered. Why didn’t they bear buds? Were
they really mustard plants? I consulted Google pictures, and found that they
belonged to eatable mustard plants. That’s why they did not bear buds, I
thought.
However, I
had collected the seeds from normal mustard plants, and not eatable ones, at
Tokushige Library flower pots. Two weeks later, in the middle of January, to my
surprise, they bore tiny buds surrounded by big leaves. A few weeks later, they
bloomed tiny yellow flowers and now, as you see in the picture, they have
become gorgeous, giant mustard plants. How brilliant!
Such tiny
sesame-like seeds have grown into such giant mustard plants. How great! Isn’t
this a wonder of Nature?
No comments:
Post a Comment