The pear is a near cousin of the apple.
But perhaps you did not know that plants and trees had cousins.
As you learn more and more about them, you will begin to feel that in many ways plants are very much like people.
Both the pear and the apple belong to the Rose family. They are cousins to all the garden roses, as well as to the lovely wild rose that you meet so often in summer along the roadside.
We know some families where the girls and boys look so much alike that we could guess they were brothers and sisters, even if we did not know that they all lived in the one house and had the one family name. If we look carefully at the plants we meet, at their leaves and flowers and fruits, and even at their stems and roots, often we may guess rightly which ones belong to the same family.
If we place side by side an apple blossom and a pear blossom, we see that they are very like each other. Both have the green outside cup which above is cut into five little green leaves. Both have five white or pinkish flower leaves. Both have a good many pins with dust boxes, and from two to five of those pins without dust boxes.
If we place side by side a pear and an apple, we see in both cases that it is the green cup, grown big and juicy and ripe, which forms the delicious fruit.
If we cut these two fruits open lengthwise, we can see just how the pins without dust boxes are set into the green cup; and we can see that the lower, united part of these pins makes a little box which holds the seeds.
In the picture the shading shows you where this seedbox ends, and the green cup, or what once was the green cup, begins. This is rather hard to understand, I know; but your teacher can make it clear to you with a real pear.
So it ought to surprise you no longer to learn that the apple and the pear are cousins.
Now, I want you to look at the picture at the head of this chapter. This is the wild rose, the flower from which the great Rose family takes its name.
This rose is a much larger flower than either the apple or the pear blossom. Its flower leaves are deep pink. These bright flower leaves make gay handkerchiefs for signaling when the rose plant wishes to attract the attention of the bees.
But there are five of them, just as there are in the apple and the pear blossom; and there are the pins with dust boxes,—so many of them, in the rose, that it would take some time to count them all. And in the center are the pins which have seedboxes below; for these pins in the rose are quite separate one from another, and each one has its own little seedbox.
So, though different in some ways, in others the flower of the rose is very much like those of the apple and the pear.
In this picture you see its fruit. This is called the “rose hip.” When ripe, it turns bright red. In late summer you see the rosebushes covered with these pretty hips. At times this fruit does not look altogether unlike a tiny apple or pear; but if we cut it open lengthwise, we see that its inside arrangements are quite different.
The lower parts of the pins without dust boxes do not grow into one piece with the green cup (now the red cup), as in the apple and the pear. Instead, this cup is hollow. To its inner sides are fastened the little seedboxes, as you will see if you look carefully at the picture. This hollow case with its separate seedboxes shows you that the rose plant is not so closely related to the pear and the apple trees as these trees are to each other.
