THE VOICE OF THE DESERT 



144 



It is said that two or three years is the normal time for 

 them to he dormant, but I have never had the patience to 

 discover and all I knov^ is that six months after one was 

 planted in sand and kept moist, nothing whatever had 

 happened to alter its appearance. When I dug it up it still 

 looked as though it were waiting to be made into a neck- 

 lace. Yet, as I also know from experience, it is easy to trick 

 them because the delay is merely the result of a simple 

 mechanical device. With a file I scratched a line a few 

 millimeters long through the wax and the hard outer skin. 

 When I planted this bean it came up in just eight days 

 and because I gave it the water it would not have got in 

 nature at that season, I hope that it will produce seeds of 

 its own a few years from now. It is already nearly a foot 

 high and looks very flourishing. 



But why should some seeds, like those of the bean, re- 

 main dormant not merely for one but for two or three 

 years? That question I have never heard raised but I can 

 make what sounds like a pretty good guess. In the desert 

 there are not infrequent years unfavorable even for desert 

 plants. During such years certain root perennials do not 

 even come up and obviously it would be very unlikely 

 that a seedling could establish itself at such a time. If one 

 whole crop of coral beans was fated to germinate and die 

 during such a year, it would obviously be a serious blow to 

 the species in that region. But if some remained domiant 

 for two and some for three years, the chance that one 

 group or the other would ultimately produce successful 

 plants would obviously be greatly increased. I mean to test 

 this theory by planting a number in the same place to 

 see if they come up in successive years. But this book will 

 probably be published before I have the answer. 



