XLIV. THE BRAMBLES OF THE FARM 



"Erratic wanderings through deadening-lands 

 Where sly old brambles plucking me by stealth 

 Put berries in my hands" 



Riley (A Country Pathway). 



Brambles are intimate associates of the farmer. Wherever 

 man has tilled a field, thorny things of some sort have settled 

 peaceably along its borders. Ever ready to invade the 

 "garden of the slothful," they have had a share in promoting 

 regular tillage. Just beyond the domain of the plow, they 

 stop and hold the fort. They are wild intractable things, no 

 respecters of clothes, nor of feelings, nor of any of the ways of 

 civilization. Under their cover other wild things dwell. 



Before there were farms, the brambles doubtless occupied 

 the openings in the woods where giant trees had recently 

 fallen, and other spots left temporarily unoccupied; for, after 

 the annual weeds, they are among the first plants to appear 

 in such places. Their seeds are planted by birds, which eat 

 their berries. Hence the dead tree, the fence, the stone pile 

 or the stump pile in the field, or any other thing in the open 

 ground that offers an alighting place for birds, is sure to have 

 a lot of brambles about it. 



They spring first from seeds, but later they spread lustily 

 from offshoots of various kinds, and form thickets. The 

 more typical brambles (thorny members of the genus Rubus) 

 have short-lived stems, which early crowd out the weeds, and 

 after a few years are themselves outstripped and overtopped 

 and shaded and killed by taller-growing shrubs and trees. In 

 the woods, therefore, their occupancy of any given place 

 where trees may grow is but temporary : but in the fence-row 

 where the farmer keeps the trees cut down, they may hold on 

 indefinitely. If mowed or burned, they spring up again from 

 uninjured roots. 



296 



