Plants and their children

by Frances Theodora Parsons

When the morning-glory finds just the support it needs, it lays hold of it, and twists about it, and then climbs upward with great satisfaction.

I want you to watch this curious performance. It is sure to amuse you. The plant seems to know so well what it is about, and it acts so sensibly when it finds what it wants.

But if it happens to meet a glass tube, or something too smooth to give it the help it needs, it slips off it, and seems almost as discouraged as a boy would be who fails in his attempt to climb a slippery tree or telegraph pole.

Fig. 123

The bean is another plant whose stem is not strong enough to hold it erect without help. But, unlike the morning-glory, the stem of the bean does not twist about the first stick it finds. Instead it sends out many shorter stems which do this work of reaching after and twining about some support. In this same way the pea is able to hold up its head in the world.

Fig. 124

Other plants are supported by their leafstalks. These twist about whatever sticks or branches they can find, and so prevent the plant from falling. The picture (Fig. [124]) shows you how the garden nightshade climbs by its leafstalk. The beautiful clematis clambers all over the roadside thicket in the same way.

The English ivy and the poison ivy, as we have learned already, climb by the help of roots which their stems send out into the trunks of trees and the crevices of buildings.