LIFE HISTORIES OF FAMILIAR PLANTS 



expense of the plants among which it finds itself ; 

 for it throws up its flower-heads and scatters its 

 seeds over their ground while they have scarcely 

 peeped from the soil, and then, when its large and 

 clumsy leaves appear, its weaker neighbours get 

 sadly jostled. Standing room and the all-important 

 sunlight daily become less for them until at last 

 the coltsfoot reigns supreme. 



How came it to possess such power ? Growing, 

 as the coltsfoot does, upon soil so poor that the 

 wonder is it could support any plant, we should 

 expect to, find a weakling in such a situation rather 

 than a strong, luxuriant plant with highly de- 

 veloped characteristics for making its way in the 

 world. In the first place, however, we must not 

 overlook the fact that, although the coltsfoot seeks 

 humble quarters, yet it is not by any means a 

 humble plant. It is of the Composite class, be- 

 longing to that dominant family of plants of which 

 the field daisy and the wild camomile (see Chapter 

 I.) are members ; a family that, as I have pre- 

 viously pointed out, is the most extensive and 

 most progressive amongst flowering plants. The 

 coltsfoot's 'credentials, therefore, are good ; and 

 the fact that it adopts a poor soil where other 

 plants could not eke out an existence, is only 

 another manifestation of the progressive charac- 

 teristics of the family to which it belongs. 



It so happens that poor, stiff soils lack certain 

 nitrogenous materials which are more or less 

 necessary to all living plants. Now the coltsfoot 

 has so adapted its assimilative processes that it 



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