LESSONS FROM NATURE.
By JEAN A. OWEN, Author of “Forest, Field and Fell,” etc.
PART V.
ADAPTABILITY TO CIRCUMSTANCES.
Many persons look upon plants as still life, forgetting, or ignorant of, the fact that their existence depends on the movement of the juices which are embodied in them. This is not even quiet in winter, when all about the plant would seem dead indeed. There is still motion being carried on, although it is necessarily of a very feeble or languid nature. There is perhaps only a very slight enlargement of the buds, but there it is nevertheless; the almost imperceptible development preparing for spring’s coming.
If a small part of the cuticle of the Vallisneria, an aquatic plant, is placed under the microscope, there is visible in every one of its tiny cells a number of little globules coursing in order, round and round, faster or slower, in a varying degree of motion, until the portion under observation has exhausted its vitality. And by a wonderful instinct—as we say—the flowers of this species, male and female, which grow on different plants, are able to detach themselves at the right season. That is, the male flowers can leave the plant stems, and floating about on the stream, they join the female flowers, and so the reproduction is effected in them by a spontaneous action on their part which is brought about in many other cases by an outside agency, the action of bees, for instance.
When the waters of a stream rise, another aquatic plant, the Kuppia Maritima is able to coil and uncoil its flower stalks, which are curled in a spiral fashion; and, as the depth of the water in which it grows changes, its blossoms are always kept on a level with the surface.