FIG. 3.—Grub, or remains of a white oak, doubtless at one time much like Fig. 2, but now decayed in the middle, including its main root; sprouting on the margins, farther and farther out after the tops were killed, to the ground.
FIG. 4.—Grub, or remains of a white oak, still older than the one represented in Fig. 3. A hole appears where the tap root has rotted away. The right-hand portion is already dividing, and in time, if often killed back, we might find several distinct oaks as descendants from one acorn.

There can be no doubt that young oak trees slowly move in this manner from one place to another. If in fifty years we have two distinct grubs or branches, three or four feet apart, where the connecting part has finally died out, I see no reason why in another fifty years each one of the two may not again have spread and divided, giving us at least four grubs, or clusters of sprouts, all originally coming from one acorn; and so the matter might go on. This is slow traveling, I admit, but there is nothing to hinder nature from taking all the time she wants.

FIG. 5.—Part of a grub of white oak, still alive and spreading over the ground, the central portions dying, the margins alive and spreading.

CHAPTER III.
PLANTS MULTIPLY BY MEANS OF STEMS.

7. Two grasses in fierce contention.—In growing a lawn at the Michigan Agricultural College, a little Bermuda grass was scattered with June grass, and the struggle has been most interesting. In the spring and for six weeks in autumn, when moisture usually abounds and the weather is cool, June grass thrives and little else is seen. In the dry, hot weeks of July and August, June grass rests and the Bermuda, which continues to spread, assumes control of the lawn, with but little of the June grass in sight. Each struggles for possession and does the best it can, and to some extent one supplements the other, with the result that at all times from spring to fall there is a close mat of living green which delights the eye and is pleasant to the feet that tread upon it. In soft ground, with plenty of room, a bit of quick or quack grass, or Bermuda, will extend in a year three to five feet or more in one direction.

FIG. 6.—Rootstock of quick grass which has grown through a potato, and in this way may be carried to another field or another farm.

June grass, quick grass, Bermuda grass, redtop, and white clover, wherever opportunity offers, spread by means of jointed stems, creeping and rooting at every joint on the surface of the ground or a little way below. These are not roots at all, but true stems somewhat in disguise. Here may also be mentioned, as having similar habit, artichokes, peppermint, spearmint, barberry, Indian hemp, bindweed, toadflax, matrimony vine, bugle-weed, ostrich fern, eagle fern, sensitive fern, coltsfoot, St. John'swort, sorrel, great willow-herb, and many more.