Plants and their children

by Frances Theodora Parsons

By the shedding of the rain from the tips of the spreading branches above, the water is collected in a ring, and so sinks into the earth; and the root branches below spread out in just the same direction as the tree branches above, till they find what they need, and drink their fill.

Fig. 138

So by the way in which a tree sheds the rain, you can tell just where its root branches reach out underground.

In smaller plants you see much the same thing. Fig. [138] shows a plant called the Caladium. You can see that the raindrops must roll outward down these leaves, and fall upon the earth just above the tips of the root branches.

Fig. [139] shows you the rhubarb plant. This has quite a different sort of root. Now, if the rhubarb leaves were like those of the Caladium, unless the rhubarb root-branches changed their direction, these root-branches would grow very thirsty indeed.

Fig. 139

But as it is, the water pours down these leaves toward the center of the plant, and reaches the ground almost directly over the straight, fleshy root, with its downward-growing branches; and we see that these root-branches are watered by the leaves above just as carefully as are those of the Caladium.

By knowing one thing about a plant, often you can guess that another thing is so.