Grass 



But the adaptability of the grass is better realised 

 when such a bud as this begins to << shoot." The stem 

 segments or internodes develop between the nodes or leaf 

 insertions. It springs up like a telescope being pulled 

 out. Should the weather be dry and cold, the segments 

 are very short, and the grass is low and stunted. But 

 in a fine, moist, low-lying meadowland, the tall grace- 

 ful stems may spring up to heights of five or more feet, 

 and the amount of green leaf and stem per square foot 

 becomes very remarkable. 



But the grass bud is by no means confined to its one 

 main flowering shoot. When the seed germinates, it puts 

 forth its first feeble tentative rootlet, which fixes itself 

 with root-hairs in the soil. The next step is to develop 

 its first internode, which gropes its way upwards carrying 

 the bud towards the light, and until it has reached a 

 definite position just a short distance below the surface. 



If the soil is rich and there is plenty of moisture, the 

 roots are actively working and food material is accu- 

 mulating in the bud. Then, however, one finds new 

 buds are being laid off within the leaf-sheaths. 



In very favourable soil no less than one hundred of 

 these stems, each with its ear of corn, springs from a 

 single seed ! In this way a regular ^^ tussock" may be 

 formed in one season by a single seed. 



The strong tussocks of hard, wiry grass-leaves which 

 make up the vegetation of a steppe are of course the 

 result not of one but of many years' growth, but yet each 

 represents the colony due to a single seed. 



The microscopic details of the leaves of some steppe 

 grasses show the most exquisite contrivances for not only 

 preventing too great a transpiration, but for making the 

 foliage as inedible as it possibly can be. In a general 

 way one might say that the upper surface of such leaves 

 consists of alternate strips of hard cells forming length- 



263 



