How Plants Secure Change of Location 381 



nodes separate the bud-bearing nodes, which, moreover, in most 

 soft-textured plants, can readily strike root. It is plain that if 

 stems are sent out horizontally in such manner as to touch the 

 ground, the nodes at their tips may strike root and send up new 

 shoots, thus originating new plants at some distance from the 

 parent, from which they will later be cut loose by the death of the 

 intermediate stem. Plants have not been slow to take advantage 

 of the possibilities of this method. Everybody knows the typical 

 case of the Strawberry, with its long slender runners which bear 

 tiny plants at their tips; and the same thing is found in the House- 

 leeks, and others too many to mention. Some plants send the 

 stems underground, after the manner of roots, and form new 

 plants, called suckers, at places not possible to predict; and this 

 makes them hard to exterminate, as in the case of the Yarrow, and 

 some other weeds of pertinacious character. Suckers, by the way, 

 spring also from roots, some kinds of which can make buds, es- 

 pecially when injured; and this is the way with some fruit trees, 

 like Apples. In a similar manner, the horizontally-radiating 

 underground equivalents of roots, the mycelial threads, of some 

 Mushrooms, send up the new Mushrooms at so regular a distance 

 from the parent as to form a conspicuous ring, whose name ''Fairy 

 Ring," implies an ancient belief as to its origin, (figure 148). 

 Again, among the more familiar plants, there are shrubs, of which 

 our Briars and Blackberries are examples, with stems so slender as 

 to curve over and bring their tips to the ground, where they take 

 root and produce new plants, known as stolons; and these con- 

 necting stems for a time form a trap for the feet of the unwary, 

 giving name to the various shrubs called Hobble-bush. The Walk- 

 ing Fern gives another example of this method. 



There are plants, however, in which the main stem itself creeps 

 on or just under the ground, striking root and sending up shoots as- 

 it goes, thus spreading its own growths to new ground. This is 

 the way in the Grasses, whose creeping stems run and branch so 

 freely, and interlock so closely, that they form the dense mats we 



