WONDERS OF PLANT LIFE 



i 



THE ASSERTIVE PLANT 



ON this crowded earth, one of the chief problems 

 which confront the individual plant is that of find- 

 ing room to grow at all. Every available space 

 is so thickly tenanted that it is only the very 

 sturdy, or the very ingenious, subject that can 

 hope to hold its own in the great struggle for a 

 position. The appearance of the June meadows 

 is not in the least suggestive of strife, yet on 

 every foot of the ground there has been waged 

 a battle that has decided the fate of a countless 

 array of units. The tall grass heads, and the 

 graceful Moon Daisies, are but the surface repre- 

 sentatives of a densely populated world beneath, 

 the inhabitants of which are so closely packed 

 together that it is pardonable to wonder how they 

 can exist at all. Indeed, the overcrowding is such 

 that not a trace of the brown earth is visible in 

 the compact turf formed by the innumerable 



