186 



THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



[JUNB, 



♦hose not covered, and sorts difficult to set freely 

 <iid so by either weight or cotering." 



Annual Rootlets. — At a recent meeting of the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences, of Philadelphia, 

 Mr. Thomas Meehan called attention to the many 

 yarying hypotheses in regard to the eccentricity 

 •f the annual layers of wood in plants, which is 

 •ometimes so great that, as recently shown by a 

 writer in The American Naturalist, the pith (in 

 the common Poison Vine), is wholly on one side, 

 and once in a while seems like a little ridge run- 

 ning along just beneath the bark. In the Poison 

 Vine the greatest thickness of wood seems gen- 

 erally on the side between the pith and the 

 •bject the vine clings to, and the writer referred 

 *D surmises that the rootlets coming out on that 

 iide may have something to do with this interior 

 thickening. Another gentleman, Dr. Hickok, of 

 Poughkeepsie, thought only those trees which 

 •loped a little thickened chiefly on the under 

 •ide. These hypotheses were inconsistent, and 

 Mr. Meehan thought the true cause of the thick- 

 ening of woody layers more on one side than the 

 •ther had yet to be explained. The rooting on 

 the under .side could not cause the thickening of 

 the wood, as Wistaria and many others which he 

 mentioned, rooting on the ground as they ran, 

 did not thicken in consequence; while Ampelop- 

 lia did, as well as the Poison Vine. The rootlets 

 by which the Poison Vine attached itself to the 

 trees had been referred to as being of some age ; 

 but this was a mistake, as in most cases save 

 •ome orchideae and a few other plants aerial root- 

 lets, like rootlets beneath the earth, were mostly 

 annual. The whole root system of plants was, 

 indeed, but the analogue of that system which 

 existed in the atmosphere. Morphology had 

 made a great stride when it pronounced all the 

 parts of the inflorescence but modified leaves. 



Botanical science had yet to go further. The 

 whole plant was but a modified leaf, roots as 

 well as branches. The same general laws that 

 we found in the aerial system, therefore, had 

 their correspondence in the terrestrial one. In 

 the terrestrial system we generally saw a marked 

 difterence in the leaves and branches; but in 

 some cases, as the arbor-vitse and deciduous 

 cypress, the two were so blended together that at 

 the annual "fall" season branchleta and leaves 

 all fell together. In these cases we saw that 

 some of these compounds of leaves and branches 

 — those the most favorably situated as regards 

 nutrition — maintained a hold on life, and, once 

 passing this critical time, had an indefinite lease 

 of life thereafter. It was precisely the same 

 with the rootlets of trees. They were the repre- 

 sentatives of leaves, and myriads died every 

 year. Only here and there one endowed with 

 greater vital privileges escaped the annual " fall," 

 and then it became a " root," with various terms 

 of endurance. Aerial roots, used by some creep- 

 ing vines, were under the same laws. Now and 

 then one would find itself in a soft crevice of 

 an old wall or in the decaying hollow of an old 

 tree, and thus become a permanent feeder to the 

 vine. In England the Evergreen Ivy had been 

 cut down near the ground, after running for 

 years over old ruins, and had continued to live 

 on. But in these exceptional cases it was found 

 that some of the rootlets, as the rule, annual, 

 had found some soft place and taken on a per- 

 manent character — had become real feeding 

 woody roots. He exhibited some old stems of 

 Ampelopsis Virginiana, which for *nany years 

 had been hanging unattached from the branches 

 of a tree, and which had eccentric wood, as in 

 the attached Poison Vines, and the surface was 

 covered with aerial roots, which were produced 

 and died annually. — Independent. 



JTERATURE, ^^RAVELS & pERSONAL ^OTES. 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



American Pomological Society. — Transac- 

 tions for 1875. Chicago meeting. Edited by the 

 Secretary, W. C. Flagg, More, Ills. 



There have been no issues of the transactions 

 of this Society that were not a credit to the Soci- 

 ety and to the country. It will be no discredit 

 to them to say that, in real value, we regard this 

 one as the most valuable of all ; for horticulture 

 is expected to be progressive, and its literature 



