258 STRUCTURE OF LATHRA SQUAMARIA. 
e. 
germination a strong conical tap-root is produced, which 
gives off numerous smaller branches, each furnished with several 
minute hemispherical suckers, by which the young plant is fixed to 
its* host. seedlings were found attached to roots, and in the 
during the first year; but if the frost is not too severe it 
continues to grow throughout the winter, for during the summer 
the plant, as a rule, has penetrated to a depth of about a foot 
below the surface, and thus secured itself from ordinary climatic 
uences. 
ng in a flowerin stem; the crowded arrangement of the 
branches accounting for the clustered habit of the scapes which, 
when viewed from the surface, appear to originate from one point. 
ch pr ng 
stems the following year, and by this mode of growth the plant 
migrates, step by step, for several yards from its starting-point. 
Flowers are never produced more than once from th same 
branches, but when the plant is very vigorous the flowering 
branches also produce clusters of branches, each capable of con- 
tinuing the plant, the result of which is a complicated branch 
system, requiring no small amonnt of perseverance to verily, 0D 
account of the great depth at which the plant grows, its extreme 
brittleness, and the complication of roots amongst which it 
occurs. We have isolated masses of the plant, the result 
gro ighi . d 
branches often weighing more than a pound, and in some districts 
in Kent the hedge-banks are one mass of the underground parts of 
Plant, penetrating to a depth of more than two feet below the 
*. No food is provided by the primary root after the first 
year, the Tosettes produced later being provided with fibrous 
rootlets springing from the stem between the leaves, or food is 
