THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 109 



well by warmth as by cold. In the new treatment, all that is 

 required is to immerse the shoots of the plants to be forced, in 

 water at a temperature of 30 to 35 degrees centegrade (about 

 80 or 90 degrees of the ordinary scale) for ten or twelve hours, 

 after which they are to be kept in a dark moist chamber at a 

 temperature of about 80 degrees until they begin to grow. 

 Then they are brought into ordinary greenhouse conditions 

 and bloom very quickly. Lilacs, azaleas and spiraeas treated 

 in the middle of November were in bloom by Christmas while 

 untreated plants of the same kind had not started. The sim- 

 plicity of the process opens up attractive possibilities for even 

 the novice in gardening. 



The Versatile Woodbine. — Climbing plants may be 

 placed in four general groups as regards the means for getting 

 up in the world. Least specialized are the scramblers, such as 

 the bed straw {Galium) and certain climbing roses and 

 brambles. These depend upon their recureved prickles to 

 catch upon other plants and hold them in place. More suc- 

 cessful are the twiners like the bean and hop that simply wind 

 their stems about other vegetation. The root-climbers are 

 more common in the tropics than in our own region but they 

 are not without representatives here in such forms as the 

 poison ivy and the English ivy. The most highly specialized 

 group comprise the tendril-climbers. The tendrils may be 

 modified stems as in the grape, petioles as in the garden nas- 

 turtium, stipules as in the species of Smilax, veins of the leaf 

 as in the pea, or even in the tips of the leaves themselves as in 

 various tropical plants. As to methods of attachment, two 

 forms are noticeable, one in which the tendrils wrap around 

 the object the other in which the tips spread out in sucker-like 

 disks. This latter form is usually developed when the 

 plants climb upon rocks or the trunks of trees. Very few 

 plants possess more than one of these methods of climbing but 

 the common woodbine {Ampelopsis quinqnc folia) is more for- 



