“My snake was dead now, so I put one foot on him to take his scalp—his rattles, I mean—when horrid thrills coursed through me. The uncanny thing began to wriggle and rattle with old-time vigor. But, fortified by Nimrod’s assurance that it was ‘purely reflex neuro-ganglionic movement,’ I hardened my heart and captured his ‘pod of dry peas.’”
HOW PLANTS LIVE
By JULIA McNAIR WRIGHT
IN the hot August days, when the air scarcely stirs, the birds sit silent in their coverts, the cattle stand under the thickest shade or knee-deep in the ponds. Only the insects seem to rejoice in the burning rays of the sun, and gayly hover around the splendid profusion of flowers.
In this season we may make various studies in plant life. Seated upon some shady veranda, we have the glory of the garden spread out before us. Or we may be on some hill, tree-crowned, not far from the sea; we find within hand reach golden-rod, asters, milfoil, blazing-star, indigo. Looking down the gentle slope to the level land, we see black-eyed Susan flaunting beside St. John’s wort and wild snap-dragon. Yonder, the little brooklet slips along without a ripple, cherishing on its border loosestrife and jewel-weed. Out in the roadway, defiant of the summer dust, almost in the wheel track, the mullein lifts its dry, gray foliage and unfolds its tardy pairs of clear yellow bloom beside that exquisite flower, the evening primrose, of which the harsh, dusty stem and leaves are such rude contrast to the fragrant salvers of pale gold—the blossom of one night.
We have ample opportunity in some or all of these to study the motion, food, and some of the varied products of the plant world.
Motion? What motions have plants other than as the wind sways them? True, there is an upward motion: they grow up inch after inch, foot after foot, the law of growth overcoming the law of gravitation. The sap rises in the vessels by root-pressure, by capillary attraction, by the forming of a vacuum in the leaf-cells, by evaporation, and so the climbing sap builds up the plant. This getting up in the world is not a trifle in plant life any more than in human life.
Many a plant seems to have an extreme ambition to rise, and if its stem proves too weak to support any decided advancement in growth, it takes measures to secure aid. It twines, bodily, perhaps, around the nearest support, as do the trumpet-creeper and honeysuckle; it modifies leaves into tendrils, as does the sweet pea; it puts forth aerial roots at its nodes, as does the ivy; it elongates a leaf stem to wrap around and around some proffered stay, as does the clematis, or diverts a bud for such purpose, as the grape-vine.