276 The Living Plant 



protective adaptations. Thus, the preservation of the store of 

 food laid up for starting the new vegetation in the Spring is 

 obviously of vital importance. We find in fact that the sugar 

 and starch stored up by perennial or biennial plants is placed 

 underground in bulbs, tubers, or rootstocks, where it is well out 

 of the sight and reach of large animals, especially when the 

 ground is frozen in winter; while in woody perennials, where the 

 food must remain largely above ground, it is scattered thinly 

 throughout a large area of tough woody tissue. As to seeds, they 

 are often protected by hard coats or extra shells, impervious, for 

 the most part, not only to gnawing teeth but also to the digestive 

 juices of animals, though in the case of large nuts the teeth of the 

 squirrels have won a trifle of the same advantage over the hard- 

 ness of the shells that the gunmakers have won over the armor 

 makers among our own civilized selves, and doubtless after much 

 the same kind of long evolutionary struggle between the two. 

 Adaptations to protection of the food supply in these nuts while 

 still growing and before the hard seed coats are formed have 

 been found in such spines as the Chestnut and Horse Chestnut 

 display: in the bitter taste of some pods: and in their green color 

 which has been taken for protective coloration, though it is also 

 readily interpretable as simply the usual utilization of all avail- 

 able surfaces for the spread of more chlorophyll. The greenness 

 of edible fruits prior to their ripeness has also been interpreted as 

 protective until the tune when they turn red or other color and 

 aid in dissemination of the seeds, as we shall consider at length in 

 the fifteenth chapter. Flowers, likewise, exhibit some remark- 

 able adaptations to protection against animals, though in a 

 different way, and combined with some more remarkable adapta- 

 tions for attracting them, though this is a subject which can be 

 considered more conveniently in our chapter on the Flower. As 

 to protective adaptations of the growth machinery, which is 

 principally the buds, there appear to be several. Not only are 

 the buds important as the originators of new growth, but con- 



