STELLARTON 



5545 



STEM 



SOME VARIATIONS IN STEMS 



Strawberry Hyacinth 



Century 

 Plant 



forward-curving ringed horns, about four inches 

 long. The European ibex is also frequently 

 called a steinbok. 



STELLARTON, stel' ahr ton, a town in Pic- 

 tou County, Nova Scotia, in the north-central 

 part of the Nova Scotia peninsula. It is oh the 

 East River and on the Intercolonial Railway, 

 two miles south of New Glasgow and ten miles 

 south of Pictou Landing. By rail to Pictou 

 the distance from Stellarton is thirteen and a 

 half miles. Stellarton is in a prosperous coal- 

 mining district, and is noted for a seam of 

 coal, thirty-seven feet thick, said to be the 

 thickest seam in the world. The town has 

 many large industrial establishments, including 

 a carriage factory, railway repair shops, cigar 

 factory, woodworking factories and bakery. It 

 is a distributing point for farm machinery, ve- 

 hicles and packed meats. Population in 1911, 

 3,910; in 1916, about 4,500. 



STEM, the stalk of a plant, shrub or tree 

 which supports the leaves in the most advan- 

 tageous position to receive light and air. It is 

 a coworker with the leaves in changing the raw 

 materials obtained from the soil into plant 

 food. The water and dissolved salts taken in 

 by the roots are carried to the leaves by the 

 stem. There they are converted into plant 

 food by the sunlight and air, and this newly- 

 made food passes through another set of cells 

 in the stem to the parts of the plant where it 

 is needed, or is stored away for future use. 



In green-stemmed plants the stalk shares 

 the work of the leaves in converting the raw 

 materials into plant food, but when the green 

 cells are shut away from the light by a thick, 

 corky bark, the stem serves only as a channel 

 for the plant juices and as a support for the 

 leaves and branches. In leafless plants like the 

 cactus, the thick, green stems, which are usu- 

 ally broad and flattened, exposing a large sur- 

 face to the light and air, perform the functions 

 of the leaves. This fleshy stalk also stores 

 water to supply the plant in times of drought, 

 and has allayed the thirst of many a traveler 

 in the arid plains of Southwestern United 

 States. Some desert plants store a sufficient 

 amount of water in their stems to carry on 

 growth for ten years or more. 



The stems of marsh and water plants contain 

 passages and cavities for the storage of air to 

 supply the plant when it is submerged and to 

 buoy up the leaves. 



Structure and Growth. If a leafstalk of cel- 

 ery is dipped into an aniline dye and then re- 

 moved and examined, it will be seen that there 

 are definitely-stained regions, showing that the 

 liquid passed upward into the leaf by certain 

 tissues, or bundles of long, narrow, tubular 

 cells. These are called fibrovascular bundles, 

 a term which simply means collections oj 

 threadlike tubes. Those plants in which the 

 bundles of cells are distributed irregularly 

 throughout the stem, as in the cornstalk, are 



