66 IMPORTANT TIMBER TREES 



the seed during its growth from the fertilized ovary to ma- 

 turity, the same as a bird or a chicken will live for the first 

 few days of its life on the substance of the egg from which 

 it sprung. 



The root insists on darkness and the stem on light, and 

 neither can be made to abandon that determination, nor 

 can the root be made to grow upward or the stem down- 

 ward. The functions of the root are twofold. One is to 

 gather the moisture the sap and with it the necessary 

 mineral food held in solution therein potash, lime, phos- 

 phoric acid, etc. which constitute approximately one half 

 the weight of the tree, and to send these up through the 

 little pores or ducts in the roots, stem, and branches to the 

 leaves, where they meet with the food the leaves gather 

 from the atmosphere, and where the two combine and are 

 practically digested through the agency of a green sub- 

 stance known as chlorophyl, a process which is wonder- 

 ful and not fully understood, producing a perfect food 

 for stem, limbs, roots, bark, leaves, flowers, and fruit, to 

 each of which it is sent in a mysterious way. The other 

 function of the root is to hold the tree upright. 



As the roots penetrate the soil they throw out little hairs 

 covered with microscopic mouths to suck in the moisture 

 containing the dissolved mineral food which they seek ; and 

 the roots travel abroad in the ground in search of it, going 

 a great distance. A tree growing in the open will send its 

 roots out as far as, and sometimes farther than, its limbs 

 extend, while they have been known to go downward more 

 than twenty feet. After a season's growth these little hairs 

 mainly die and the tree takes a rest, and in a certain class 

 called deciduous trees the leaves die also and drop off an- 

 nually. With some evergreens the leaves stay on several 

 years, but all of our timber trees, except those growing in 

 the tropics, insist on taking a rest a part of each year. Few 

 new hairs with their cells grow on that portion of the roots 

 once occupied by them, but a new growth of roots must 

 take place each year, springing out from those of former 



