CHAPTER VIII 



SOME STRANGE GREENHOUSE PLANTS 



It is in the greenhouse, where tropical and sub- 

 tropical plants are cultivated, that we most often 

 meet with strange and weird-looking plants that 

 do not seem at all to conform to our ideas of 

 plant form as it should be. Indeed, the average 

 person is far too prone to look upon plants as 

 necessarily consisting of a stem, branches, leaves, 

 flowers, and roots. However, only a small pro- 

 portion of the world's plants possesses all these 

 organs ; some plant species carry on their life 

 functions without either leaves or branches, and 

 others without flowers, and still others without 

 roots ; also, there are numerous minute species 

 that possess none of these organs, their ■ /hole 

 structure consisting only of a single microscopic 

 cell that moves and lives in pond or sea-water. 

 Such unicellular plants are, therefore, altogether 

 without stem, branches, leaves, flowers, and roots. 

 In the British climate, most of the plants with 

 w^hich we are familiar are able to develop their 

 parts more or less completely, but in the tropics 

 and warmer regions of the earth where plant life is 

 more abundant, and the struggle for existence is 

 necessarily more keenly fought, plants have to 

 resort to all sorts of strange manoeuvres and 

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