150 PIEST STUDIES IN PLANT LIFE 



bramble-bush has clambered over the hedge, reached 

 down on the other side, and rooted itself ! A new 

 bramble-bush from this root is stretching out its 

 prickly fingers to seek for new places where it may- 

 climb. 



6. How a little bit of leaf can make a whole plant. 

 A farmer with axe and spade roots up a hedge of 

 prickly-pear. He carts it all away — root and stem 

 and leaves. All ? No ; some small broken bits of 

 the leaves are left on the loose earth. In a few 

 months new plants are growing all along the line of 

 the old hedge. The leaf-fragments have taken root ! 



7 New plants may spring from roots. And 

 now, having seen how a plant may spring from a 

 leaf, let us see what the root can do in multiplying 

 plants. If you examine willow trees growing beside 

 a river, you may often see a leafy shoot from a root 

 that has been laid bare by the river. Cut off the 

 root that bears the shoot and plant it, and you have 

 a new tree. This sometimes happens when a flood 

 bears off a root of this kind. Similarly, you may 

 find a new plant growing from a raspberry root. If 

 you dig up a raspberry plant that has not been touched 

 for a season, you will probably find plants that have 

 grown up from the roots, a foot or two away from 

 the old plant. 



8. And the stem : can it, too, make new plants ? 

 Yes, in a number of ways ; sometimes from the stem 

 above ground, and sometimes from the stem under- 

 ground. 



9. How the stem above ground makes new 

 plants. Buffalo grass throws out long creeping stems, 



