Engineering Principles in Vegetation.
If the engineer has many a golden hint spread before him in the hills and dales, the streams and oceans of the world, not less fruitful is the study of what takes place just beneath the surface of the earth where the roots of grain and shrub, reed and tree, take life and form. Plant a kernel of wheat in the ground and note how its rootlets pierce the soil, extending always from the tip. They need no gardener or botanist to bid them lengthen and thicken where food chiefly abounds. In an arid plain of Arizona a vine, in ground parched and dry, goes downward so far, and spreads its fibrils so much abroad, as soon to show ten times as much growth below the drifting sands as above them. In fertile, well-watered soil the same vine descends less than half as far, and yet with more gain. A bald cypress in a swamp of Florida responds to different surroundings with equal profit. Finding its food near the surface its roots take horizontal lines, at no great depth in the soil. Every wind that stirs these roots but promotes their thrift and strengthens their anchorage. A wealth of sustenance floats in the swamp water. In seizing it and being thereby fed, the roots develop “knees”; these brace the tree so firmly against tempests as to win admiration from the engineer. When the progeny of this cypress grow on well-drained land, the knees do not appear, while the roots within a narrowed area strike deep. Thus simply in doing what its surroundings incite it to do, the tree acts as if it had intelligence, as if it consciously saw and chose what would do it most good.
Deciduous cypress, hypothetical diagram.
Lumbermen in the North observe much the same responsiveness. In a grove of pines they see that the trees which stand close together are tall and cylindrical. When all the pines but one in a cluster are cut down, that one will speedily thicken the lower part of its trunk by virtue of the increased action of the winds, just as a muscle thickens by exercise.