NATURE'S WOODCRAFT: A CHAPTER ON STEMS 



233 



To much the same purpose speaks a recent traveller, Mr. James 

 Rodway. Species of Loranthacece the Mistletoe family propagated by 

 birds, are parasitic on the forest trees of Guiana. "As the parasite gets 

 strong, its long extensions spread from branch to branch, and from twig 

 to twig, everywhere extending octopus-like arms provided with sucking- 

 discs, which adhere to and bleed the tree in a hundred different places. 

 Branch after branch is 

 dried up. but as the 

 loranth has many strings 

 to his bow, this does not 

 hurt him much. There 

 are always more to con- 

 quer, and unless the tree 

 stands alone, which is, of 

 course, impossible in the 

 forest, he rarely comes 

 to grief. It is not to 

 his advantage that the 

 tree should die quickly, 

 and therefore the longer 

 it can support him the 

 better. However, even 

 the most sturdy giant of 

 the forest suffers greatly 

 from such continual de- 

 pletion, and may be so 

 weakened as to lag 

 behind in the race for 

 life, with the ultimate 

 result that it is smothered 

 by its fellows." 



C ir cumn utation, 

 which has been shown 



to be so general in the Ph oto by] IE. step. 



growing ends of stems, FIG. 289. HOOKS OF WILD ROSE (Rosa canina). 



is seen to excess in the 

 climbing organs of weak- 

 stemmed plants, and is the means by which they are enabled to feel about 

 (if one may so say) in search of support. Thus the apex of the stem of a 

 Hop-plant (Humidus lupulus), fourteen inches in length, has been known to 

 sweep round in a circle nineteen inches in diameter in quest of something 

 to lay hold of, and the long shoot of a tropical Asdepiad, observed by 

 Darwin, beating this record, described a circle five feet in diameter. As 

 the weather was hot, the plant was allowed to stand on the naturalist's 



For the purpose of resting its Ions' weak stems on stronger shrubs in climbing, 

 the Wild Rose develops its prickles into flat curved hooks. 



