KINDS OF ROOTS. 



35 



and so make props or aflditional trunks. Growing in this way, there is no limit to 

 the extent of the branches, and a single Banyan will spread over several acres of 

 ground and have hundreds of trunks all made from aerial roots. 



86. Aerial Rootlets, or such roots on a small scale, are produced by several woody 

 vines to climb by. English Ivj^, our Poison Ivy, and Trumpet-Creeper are well- 

 known cases of the sort. 



87. Air-Plants. Roots which never reach the gi'ound are also produced by certain 

 plants whose seeds, lodged upon the boughs or trunks of trees, high up in the 

 air, grow there, and mnke an 

 Epiphyte, as it is called (from 

 two Greek words meaning 

 a plant on a plant), or an 

 Air-Plant. The latter name 

 refers to the plant's getting 

 its livinac altogether from the 

 air ; as it must, for it has no 

 connection with the ground 

 at any time. And if these 

 plants can live on air, in this 

 way, it is easy to understand 

 that common vegetables oret 

 j)art of what they live on di- 

 rectly from the air. In wann 

 countries there are many very 

 handsome and curious air- 

 |)lants of the Orchis family. 

 A great number are culti- 

 vated in hot-houses, merely 

 fixed upon pieces of wood 

 and hung up. They take no 

 nourishment from the boughs of the tree they happen to grow upon. 



88. Parasitic Plants are those which strike their roots, or what answer to roots, 

 into the bark or wood of the species they grow on, and feed upon its sap. The 

 Mistletoe is a woody parasitic plant, which engrafts itself when it springs from the 

 seed upon the branches of Oaks, Hickories, or other trees. The Dodder is a com- 



Air-|)lant3 of the Orchis fiimily. 





