NATURE'S WOODCRAFT: A CHAPTER ON STEMS 217 



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FIG. 271. STAR OF BETHLEHEM (Ornithogalum umbellatum). 



One of the most beautiful of the smaller liliaceous flowers. The grass-like leaves have a white line down the centre, 



and the white flowers come up in a loose cluster (corymb) of from six to ten. It is naturalized in places here, but 



is a native of Europe south of Belgium. About one-third of the natural size. 



soon as their extremity touches the ground, and appear like shrouds and 

 stays supporting the mainmast of a line-of-battle ship : while others send 

 out parallel, oblique, horizontal, and perpendicular shoots in all directions. 

 Frequently trees above a hundred feet high, up-rooted by the storm, are 

 stopped in their fall by these amazing cables of Nature, and are thus 

 enabled to send forth vigorous shoots, though far from their perpendicular, 

 with their trunks inclined to every degree from the meridian to the horizon. 

 Their heads remain firmly supported by the bush-ropes ; many of their 

 roots soon refix themselves in the earth, and frequently a strong shoot 

 will sprout out perpendicularly from near the root of the reclined trunk, 

 and in time become a stately tree." 



The Buttress-trees of the virgin forests of Central America, again, have 

 very peculiar stems. They are provided, as their name implies, with 

 buttresses from six inches to a foot thick, which project from the stems 

 like walls to a distance of several feet, thus affording room for a comfortable 

 hut in the angle between them. Then there are the Pao-Barringudos of 



