Grass 
But the adaptability of the grass is better realised 
when such a bud as this begins to “shoot.” The stem 
segments or internodes develop between the nodes or leaf 
insertions. It springs up like a telescope being pulled 
out. Shouldthe weather be dry and cold, the segments 
are very short, and the grass is low and stunted. But 
in a fine, moist, low-lying meadowland, the tall grace- 
ful stems may spring up to heights of five or more feet, 
and the amount of green leaf and stem per square foot 
becomes very remarkable. 
But the grass bud is by no means confined to its one 
main flowering shoot. When the seed germinates, it puts 
forth its first feeble tentative rootlet, which fixes itself 
with root-hairs in the soil. The next step is to develop 
its first internode, which gropes its way upwards carrying 
the bud towards the light, and until it has reached a 
definite position just a short distance below the surface. 
If the soil is rich and there is plenty of moisture, the 
roots are actively working and food material is accu- 
mulating in the bud. Then, however, one finds new 
buds are being laid off within the leaf-sheaths. 
In very favourable soil no less than one hundred of 
these stems, each with its ear of corn, springs from a 
single seed! In this way a regular “tussock” may be 
formed in one season by a single seed. 
The strong tussocks of hard, wiry grass-leaves which 
make up the vegetation of a steppe are of course the 
result not of one but of many years’ growth, but yet each 
represents the colony due to a single seed. 
The microscopic details of the leaves of some steppe 
grasses show the most exquisite contrivances for not only 
preventing too great a transpiration, but for making the 
foliage as inedible as it possibly can be. In a general 
way one might say that the upper surface of such leaves 
consists of alternate strips of hard cells forming length- 
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