PLANT PARTNERSHIPS. 



Fig. 1825. Mr. D. W. Beadle. 



^HIS truth, enunciated by the great 

 apostle is of wide application, it 

 applies not only to man, but to all 

 life, both animal and veg-etable. 

 Such is the interrelation of all living crea- 

 tures that it is quite apparent that " no one 

 lives to himself." From minutest infusoria 

 to the largest animal, from the microscopic 

 lichen to the royal oak this interdepend- 

 ence exists. That this fact has sometimes 

 a very practical bearing upon the work of 

 the horticulturist, this paper is intended to 

 illustrate. 



Careful students of plant life have ascer- 

 tained that a considerable number of trees, 

 shrubs and herbaceous plants are depend- 

 ent upon the assistance of some other living 

 plant to maintain life. Attempts to grow 

 seedlings of beech and fir in soil from which 



other plant life was strictly excluded, have 

 always resulted in failure. For a short 

 time they struggled on in a puny way and 

 died. As in the fable, the lion, notwith- 

 standing his great strength, was obliged, in 

 order to save his life, to avail himself of the 

 help of the feeble mouse, so the royal oak, 

 that it may live, must accept the aid of the 

 most feeble of plants. 



Anton Kerner von Marilarun, Professor of 

 Botany in the University of Vienna, in his 

 Natural History of plants, states that all 

 plants of Pyrolaceae and Vaccinaceae, win- 

 tergreen and whortelberry families ; most if 

 not all Ericaceae, Betulaceae, and Fagaceae 

 heath, birch and beech families ; a great 

 number of the cone-bearing evergreens and 

 some others, are dependent upon the assist- 

 ance of a fungus partner for life and growth. 



Readers of the Canadian Horticulturist 

 will surely have made the acquaintance of 

 some of the members of that extensive 

 family of crj-ptogamous plants called fungi, 

 and doubtless regard them as they do the 

 San Jose Scale, enemies to be if possible ex- 

 terminated. They will remember that fungi 

 have no green color, neither roots, flowers, 

 nor seeds ; that their vegetative parts are 

 usually hidden from observation, and only 

 the organs of reproduction exposed to view. 

 Some feed upon living plants, the parasitic ; 

 others upon decaying vegetable or animal 

 matter, the saprophjrtic. Of the latter group 

 some enter into a mutually beneficial ar- 

 rangement or partnership with green-leaved 

 plants, termed symbiosis ; a word com- 

 pounded from the Greek, which means living 

 together. 



In order that the process by which this 

 partnership is formed may be clearly under- 

 stood, let us recall the manner of growth of 



