Read it through once

An Artichoke fruit, for instance, will take nearly eight seconds to reach the ground from a height of a few feet. But if you cut away its hairs, it will touch the ground in a little more than one second. A Sycamore fruit of which the wing has been removed falls to the ground in about a quarter of the time that it takes when it has not been injured, so that the wing helps it to fly to four times the distance that it could reach if it had none. The Ash fruit also remains twice as long in the air as it would do if it had no wing; and so on.