IO THE FIRST BOOK OF FARMING 



plants in the garden soil will grow larger than those 

 in the sand. The roots evidently must get food from 

 the soil and those in the good garden soil get more 

 than those in the poorer sand. Another important 

 function of plant roots then is to take food from the 

 soil for the plant. 



You know how thick and fleshy the roots of rad- 

 ishes, beets and turnips are. Well, go into the gar- 

 den and see if you can find a spring radish or an 

 early turnip that has sent up a flower stalk, blos- 

 somed and produced seeds. If you are successful, 

 cut the root in two and notice that instead of being 

 hard and fleshy like the young radish or turnip, it 

 has become hollow, or soft and spongy (see Fig. 6). 

 Evidently the hard, fleshy young root was packed 

 with food, which it afterwards gave up to produce 

 flower stalk and seeds. 



A fourth use of the root, then, is to store food for 

 the future use of the plant. 



Experiment. Plant a sweet potato or place it 

 with the lower end in a tumbler of water and set it 

 in a warm room. Observe it from day to day as it 

 puts out new shoots bearing leaves and roots (see 

 Fig. 7). Break these off and plant them in soil and 

 you have a number of new plants. If you can get 

 the material, repeat this experiment with roots of 

 horse-radish, raspberry, blackberry or dahlia. From 

 this we see that it is the work of some roots to pro- 

 duce new plants. This function of roots is made 

 use of in propagating or obtaining new plants of 

 the sweet potato, horse-radish, blackberry, raspberry, 

 dahlia and other plants. 



