MOORLAND PLANTS 



223 



wind may injure plants with young leaves full cf 

 watery juices. The terrace in front of the house was 

 not long ago covered with healthy plants sending 

 up plenty of vigorous shoots. Three or four days of 

 north wind came on (middle of May) and the plants 

 were scorched and blighted. Now they look as if a 

 sheet of flame had passed over them ; the tips of the 

 shoots are dead, the leaves curled and blackened at 

 their edges. No watering would have saved them, 

 nor even diminished the injury. 



Kihlman has specially noted the effect of dry, cold 

 winds in his account of the vegetation of Russian 

 Lapland. 1 Even marsh-plants, he tells us, perish from 

 drought in the dry wind-storms of early spring, and 

 the trees of Lapland are regularly cut down to the 

 level at which they are protected by the deep snow of 

 winter. 



These considerations may well induce us to enlarge 

 the interpretation which we first put upon the peculiar 

 structure of the Crowberry-leaf. It is admirably 

 protected against drought, it is true, but not against 

 drought only. It is equally well protected against 

 cold, and against cutting winds, which would set up a 

 forced transpiration when the roots were unable to 

 raise water from the dampest soil. 



I am therefore inclined to look upon Crowberry, the 

 Cross-leaved Heath, the Cranberry, Andromeda and 

 the Rushes as needing protection against cold quite as 

 much as against summer drought. We may expect 

 to confirm or refute this supposition by studying the 



1 Pflanzenbiologische Studien aits Ritssisch-Lappland. Acta 

 Soc. pro fauna et flora Fennica. Tom. VI. (1891). 



