OFFSHOOTS ON RUNNERS. 



801 



Everyone knows the long runners of the Strawberry plant (Fragaria vesca). 

 Here buds arise at the intermediate nodes as well as at the tip of the runner, and these 

 develop into new plants after the thread-like connecting portions have perished. 

 Suppose a Strawberry stock sends out three runners during the summer; each takes 

 root at 5 nodes, and from each node a bud, i.e. an ofFshoot, develops, so that the 

 following year the mother-stock is surrounded by fifteen daughter-plants. It should 

 be noted that the length of the internodes in each runner is unequal. For example. 



O'M 



■) 

 ■^ 



Fig. 446. ^Formation of a clustered colony by means of aerial runners in Saxifraga ßagellaris. 



in one which had extended over the ground in the shade of the wood, the first inter- 

 node was 37, the second 34, the third 31, the fourth 30, and the fifth and last 

 22 cm.; thus the oflfshoots were the closer together the greater their distance from 

 the mother-plant. Next summer fifteen new offshoots were again formed from 

 each of the original fifteen, arranged in exactly the same way, and in the forest- 

 glade, where two years previously there had been only a single Strawberry plant 

 occupying a space of 50 sq. cm., there would now be 200 plants distributed over a 

 space of about 3600 sq, cm. 



The lesser Spearwort (Ranunculus reptans), the Ground Ivy (Glechoma 

 hederacea), and the creeping Cinquefoil (Pot-entilla reptans) display quite as 



Vol. II. 



101 



