A plant now being cultivated in the newly established botanical garden of the University of Caracas may prove to be nature’s greatest boon to pestered husbands and harassed mothers. It is described only under the popular Spanish name of “planta del mudo.” It looks like sugar cane. According to reliable reports anybody who chews the stem is stricken dumb for 48 hours.
Other curiosities of the garden include a plant which allegedly can stimulate hair growth on bald heads and a bush whose blossoms open snow-white in the morning and turn red at noon. Here also blooms the exotic “Queen of Night,” a climbing cactus with a white flower five inches in diameter which opens at sunset and closes at sunrise.
The Scourge of the Earth: Locusts
From the days of the Hebrews prophets a visitation of locusts has been considered one of the plagues of God. A migration of millions of these grasshopper-like insects in clouds obscuring the sun leaves behind a countryside devastated as though by fire. In flight they sound like a forest fire being spread by a brisk wind. Whenever they come to earth areas of hundreds of square yards almost immediately are denuded of everything green.
In history their raids have been associated chiefly with the Near East. Quite similar creatures have caused far-reaching destruction over most of the world including the United States.
The last such phenomenon was about 1880. Since then grasshoppers have hopped, not flown. There have been some great invasions, but the insects have moved along the ground where it is easier to combat them.
The reason for the transformation was found a few years ago by entomologists. Hopping grasshoppers are changed into flying grasshoppers by heat and hunger. Grown in test cages at high temperatures and deprived of succulent green food, the insects acquired longer wings, became slimmer, and took on brighter colors.
It apparently is a curious provision of nature to preserve the grasshopper race. When on the edge of perishing, they are supplied with wings to carry them to green pastures a few hundred miles away. Lately there has been some indication that those in the western United States might again enter the flying phase in the near future. During the great drought of the early thirties there was a stimulus almost sufficient to make them undergo the complete transformation.
At present there seems little prospect that there will be another flying cloud in this part of the world. By planting cultivated crops on land formerly covered by grass, man provides good egg-laying grounds and plenty of green food.
Adequate information still is lacking on what makes grasshoppers increase and decrease. Also a mystery is the mechanism by which the harmless solitary phase is transformed into the dangerous gregarious phase. Several types occur in both phases and each can change itself into the other, altering their habits so that they attack in mass rather than as individuals.