2IO Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



hard material in the cells which make up their sub- 

 stance. Still, even the brambles are yet at heart 

 mere creepers like the cinquefoil. They do not grow 

 erect and upright on their own stems : they trail and 

 skulk and twine in and out among other and taller 

 bushes than themselves. The leaves remain very 

 much of the cinquefoil type ; and altogether there is 

 a good deal of the potentilla left in the brambles even 

 now. 



However, these woody climbers have certainly 

 some fresh and more developed peculiarities of their 

 own. They are all prickly shrubs, and the origin of 

 their prickles is sufficiently simple. Even the poten- 

 tillas have usually hairs on their stems ; and these 

 hairs serve to prevent the ants and other honey-thiev- 

 ing insects from running up the stalks and stealing 

 the nectar intended for fertilising bees and butterflies. 

 Similar hairs in the goose-grass grew, you will re- 

 collect, into the little clinging hooks of the stems and 

 midribs. But in the brambles, hairs of the same sort 

 have grown still thicker and stouter, side by side with 

 the general growth in woodiness of the whole plant ; 

 so that they have at last developed into short thorns, 

 which serve to protect the leaves and stem from herbi- 

 vorous animals. As a rule, the bushes and weeds 

 which grow in waste places are very apt to be pro- 



