MYSTERIES AND REVELATIONS OF THE PLANT WORLD 



1279 



WHITE 



How they 



"DUTCHMAN'S 



HEARTS, OR 



BREECHES' 



travel from woodland to woodland is 

 still a mystery. 



very large num- 

 ber of compos- 

 •ites, the typica\ 

 prairie flowers, 

 also produce 

 small a m o unts 

 of rosin, and the 

 foliage of nearly 

 all of them emits 

 the pungent odor 

 of rosin. 



Trees are al- 

 ways exposed to 

 attacks from two 

 hosts of ene- 

 mies, fungi and 

 insects. A wound 

 in a conifer im- 

 mediately causes 

 a flow of rosin. The rosin embalms, so to speak, any 

 fungus spores or insects that might find their way into 

 the wound. The liquid rosin soon hardens and seals up 

 the wound and, in the course of years, new wood grows 

 over the antiseptic covering. The function of rosin 

 in defending trees against insects was well shown in 

 recent years after the great devastation caused in the 

 yellow pine forests of the Black Hills by several species 

 of bark-boring beetles. Fires and drought had weaken- 

 ed the trees and gave the beetles a great advantage for 

 several years, so that they 

 destroyed thousands of 

 acres of fine forest. Then 

 the government organized 

 its forest service and pre- 

 vented fires. Rainy sea- 

 sons also returned, and the 

 beetles began to be found 

 dead in their tunnels under 

 the bark drowned in the 

 flow of rosin of the healthy 

 and vigorous trees. 



The meaning of the poi- 

 son in the loco-weed of the 

 western plains seems fair- 

 ly clear. It protected the 

 plants from extermination 

 by the herds of wild buf- 

 falo, who evidently had 

 learned to avoid it, for none 

 of the early observers speak 

 of finding "locoed" bufl^a- 

 loes. Domestic cattle, on 

 the other hand have not yet 

 learned to avoid it and are 

 often killed by it, especially 

 in seasons of poor pasture 



But what is the mean- 

 ing of the alkaline poison 

 in the poison ivy and poi- 



BLUE ANISE-FLOWER OR GIANT HYSSOP 



The method of dissemination of this lovely flower 



is also unknown. 



BLUEBELLS OF SCOTLAND 

 The method of dissemination of this delicate 6ower is unknown. 



son sumach? Would it have the same efifect on 

 browsing animals that it has on the skin of many 

 humans? The poison evidently has no injurious ef- 

 fect on birds, because they eat freely of the white 

 berries and scatter the seeds far and wide. 



Certain plant 

 forms, although 

 they must be 

 fairly common 

 in nature, are 

 n e V e r t h e less 

 rarely found by 

 naturalists and 

 botanists. 



The little 

 green floating 

 duckweeds, 

 abundant on 

 every pond in 

 late summer, sel- 

 dom produce 

 their simple 

 flowers and al- 

 though I have 

 been familiar 

 with the plants since boyhood schooldays, I have never 

 found the flowers. 



The jointed scouring rushes, also known as horsetails 

 or equisetae, grow from small dust-like spores. They are 



common plants, but it is al- 

 most impossible to find 

 them in their first, or pro- 

 thallium stage. Only once, 

 m the month of July, did 

 I find them as little green 

 lumps on moist earth which 

 had been pushed up from a 

 lake bottom by a railroad 

 fill. Many ferns are very 

 common, but very few bot- 

 anists and lovers of flowers 

 have ever found the small 

 heart-shaped fern babies 

 except in greenhouses. 



The beautiful pink-and- 

 white moccasin flowers are 

 fairly common in their 

 favorite localities, moist 

 meadows and spruce and 

 tamarack swamps. But 

 something seems to be mys- 

 teriously wrong with their 

 methods of pollination and 

 seeding. Many of the flow- 

 ers remain unpollinated. 

 and, of the millions of min- 

 ute seeds produced, very, 

 very few ever start a new 

 plant. One could not find 



