52 Some Wayside Problems 



is a common enough plant, and a very short hunt 

 down a hedgerow any time in summer will suffice 

 for the discovery of its purple and orange blossoms, 

 in form so like the flowers of the potato as at once 

 to mark their relationship. In autumn its brilliant 

 red berries will be still more conspicuous. A very 

 brief examination will show that the plant cannot 

 properly be said to twine at all, not at least in the 

 same sense as those already named. It straggles and 

 clambers up through a bush, elbowing itself up chiefly 

 by means of its leaves, which do the work of exceed- 

 ingly rude tendrils, the upper leaves being furnished 

 with ears at the base to facilitate the process. But 

 in particular it will be observed that though the stem, 

 more from force of circumstances than from any 

 natural instinct of its own, does occasionally make a 

 coil round some object, it has no sort of attachment 

 to one or the other direction. It is not that some 

 plants go one way and some the other, the same 

 shoot of the same plant will occasionally do both. 

 This fact, though of no particular value for the 

 general purpose of my remarks, is yet valuable as 

 showing the need there is for individual observation 

 even of those facts which would seem to be the best 

 attested. 1 



Another matter which suggests difficulties of a 

 similar kind is the practice of most flowers to close 

 at night. It is said that to be open during the day 

 is a clear advantage, because then insects are astir 

 which help to fertilize them, and so to propagate 

 their race; and that to be shut at night is equally 

 advantageous as preventing rain or dew from spoiling 

 the delicate machinery of stamens and pistil. So far 

 so good. But what of plants which close just at the 



1 With regard to the plants which truly twine it has been 

 suggested that their course may have some relation to the 

 motion of the sun. It would be interesting to know how they 

 behave in the southern hemisphere where, according to this 

 idea, their motions should be reversed. 



