THE BRAMBLE AND ROSE 



they cannot bear their own weight, and fall back upon a 

 branch of the hedge. There are small curved little rough- 

 nesses along the stem and on the under side of the leaves of 

 the Galium ; these hitch on to the twig. Up to this point then 

 the stem is supported, and the young part above grows until 

 it also gets a lodgment, and so it goes on until it sometimes 

 reaches right over the top of the hedge. 



Its young flowering branches grow out towards the light 

 away from the main stem, and the yellow withered stem in 

 autumn rests upon the hedge just as a piece of string laid 

 upon it might do. 



The Bramble and Rose manage to get a support in very 

 much the same way, but in Great Britain the Bramble 

 generally grows in open ground and its branches take 

 root. 



The peculiar, curved-back prickles of the Bramble and its 

 arching sideways growth would of course hang it on to any 

 horizontal branches in the neighbourhood. Kerner measured 

 the length of the stem of a Bramble which had interwoven 

 itself into the boughs of a tree, and found that it was over 

 twenty feet long, although it was only one-third of an inch 

 thick. In Chile one often finds hedges of Brambles ten to 

 fifteen feet in height, which have been formed by the aid of 

 other plants, and also by the way in which the branches 

 become entangled with one another. 



Some Climbing Roses act in a very similar way, especially 

 if grown on trellis, but the flower shoots always turn to the 

 light like those of the Galium. 



But it is the creepers and lianes of the tropical forests 

 that are the most remarkable of all climbing plants. They 

 twine round the stems and hang in great loops and grotesque 

 folds from the branches. Sometimes in the dense shade it 



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