BOTANY 



859 



BOTANY 



It has to be a very broad-minded plant-lover 

 who can love weeds as well as the beautiful 

 garden plants, and yet to a botanist a weed 

 may be a far more interesting plant than the 

 most carefully nurtured flower. For it is no 

 weakling it does not demand care and con- 

 genial surroundings, but grows wherever it 

 finds itself. And if, at times, it is too self- 

 assertive, and steals food, moisture and air from 

 weaker plants about it, why that is what makes 

 it a weed. The name weed is but a relative 

 term, and almost any plant might be so called 

 under certain conditions. See WEED. 



Another very interesting class of plants con- 

 sists of those that store food. Just as truly as 



of which the flowers and finally the seeds 

 appear. 



Everything in those plants which have blos- 

 soms works toward that one end the produc- 

 tion of seed ; but after these have ripened some- 

 thing remains to be done. How are they to be 

 carried to some place where they may take 

 root and grow? So interesting and important 

 is this question that an entire article has been 

 devoted to it in these volumes, and in the 

 article SEEDS, under the subtitle Seed Dispersal, 

 will be found descriptions of the devices by 

 which seeds go on long journeys. 



Dt 



THREE FAMILIAR EXAMPLES OF PARASITES 



the squirrels, which during the fall bear off to 

 their tree-homes nuts and acorns, store up more 

 than they can use at the time, do these thrifty 

 plants provide for a time that is coming. They 

 are not always allowed to keep this surplus 

 food and use it as they intended, however, for 

 man likes it, too, and it is frequently to be seen 

 on his table. For it is the part of the beet, 

 the onion, the carrot, the parsnip or the turnip 

 which man eats that constitutes the stored-up 

 food. These are biennial, or two-year, plants 

 that is, they do not produce seed the first 

 year they are in the ground. During the first 

 summer they are busy manufacturing food and 

 laying it away either in their roots, as in the 

 case of the turnip or carrot, or in that part of 

 the stem known as the bulb, as in the case of 

 the onion. The second year this stored food 

 is made use of to build a tall stem, on the top 



The Struggle for Existence. There are many, 

 many people who go through life and never 

 see a foxglove; it is not one of the very com- 

 monest flowers. And yet a knowledge of the 

 seed-producing ability of that plant makes it 

 seem strange that there are not foxgloves to be 

 pushed aside wherever one steps. For a single 

 foxglove plant may bear in a year over 1,250,000 

 seeds, and if every one of these were planted 

 and if each grew and bore seeds, there would 

 be at the end of the second season 1,562,500,- 

 000,000 seeds. Continuing the process, it may 

 be seen that the descendants of the one fox- 

 glove plant would within a comparatively few 

 years spread all over the earth. But all of this 

 hinges on a very large {/ {/ every seed could 

 be planted, grow and produce seeds. It is here 

 that the "struggle for existence" and the "sur- 

 vival of the fittest," as the great scientist Dar- 



