THE STOHY OF SOME COMMON PLANTS. 139 



and downwards, anchor the tree firmly, so keeping it erect. But 

 underground stem, besides functioning as a natural prop for the tree, 

 plays a further and more important part, since there is stored up within 

 its tissues the surplus food, manufactured within its green leaves from 

 the carbon-dioxide of the air by the aid of sunlight. On this hoard 

 the tree draws yearly, and the material is lent from which the huge 

 mass of flowers is constructed. Should too much of the starchy food 

 be used, or not enough have accumulated owing to an adverse season, 

 there will be few or no flowers the succeeding year. A sufficient 

 balance must be kept at its bankeis, as it were, or its life work will 

 remain undone. 



The dead leaves of the cabbage-tree are scrupulously removed 

 every year by the tidy but too-zealous gardener, and a long, naked 

 stem results. Nature, however, loves not nakedness in any form- 

 the bare rock she clothes with lichens, and the fallen giant of the 

 forest with moss ; so, too, she hides the upper portion of our tree's 

 trunk with a not inelegant covering of brown dead leaves. Nor is she 

 mindful of beauty alone in so doing, for these leaves become saturated 

 with moisture when the welcome rain falls, the trunk on its part 

 putting forth many shoit but active roots, which must assist the leaves 

 materially to the all-important water-supply in dry weather. As for 

 the leaves themselves, they are provided with a strong, fibrous skeleton, 

 which enables them to defy the frequent gales ; also, they are more or 

 less erect, and thus escape the full force of the sun's rays a decided 

 benefit in the long, hot summer days : and. finally, their minute 

 structure is such as to guard them against excessive loss of moisture 

 in times of drought. 



The cabbage-tree blooms during November and December ; the 

 flower-stems are much-branched, and crowded with small whitish 

 flowers. These have a most powerful, though rather sickly, odour, 

 which attracts crowds of insect visitors, who in return for the gift of 

 sweet honey assist in bringing the dust-like pollen of the stamens 

 to the stigma, and thus fertilising the egg, which in due course will 

 then grow into a seed that is, into a small body containing within ir 

 a tiny cabbage-tree. The seeds are black in colour, and angular, nine 

 or less being enclosed in the succulent, three-chambered, milky-white 

 berries. These latter are greedily eaten by birds, who thus assist in 

 sowing the seeds far from the parent tree. Not only do the native 

 birds engage in this work, but the introduced ones have learnt also to 



