XLIV. THE BRAMBLES OF THE FARM 
“Erratic wanderings through deadening-lands 
Where sly old brambles plucking me by stealth 
Put berries in my hands.” 
—Riley (A Country Pathway). 
Brambles are intimate associates of the farmer. Wherever 
man has tilled a field, thorny things of some sort have settled 
peaceably along its borders. Ever ready to invade the 
“garden of the slothful,”’ they have had a share in promoting 
regular tillage. Just beyond the domain of the plow, they 
stop and hold the fort. They are wild intractable things, no 
respecters of clothes, nor of feelings, nor of any of the ways of 
civilization. Under their cover other wild things dwell. 
Before there were farms, the brambles doubtless occupied 
the openings in the woods where giant trees had recently 
fallen, and other spots left temporarily unoccupied; for, after 
the annual weeds, they are among the first plants to appear 
in such places. Their seeds are planted by birds, which eat 
their berries. Hence the dead tree, the fence, the stone pile 
or the stump pile in the field, or any other thing in the open 
ground that offers an alighting place for birds, is sure to have 
a lot of brambles about it. 
They spring first from seeds, but later they spread lustily 
from offshoots of various kinds, and form thickets. The 
more typical brambles (thorny members of the genus Rubus) 
have short-lived stems, which early crowd out the weeds, and 
after a few years are themselves outstripped and overtopped 
and shaded and killed by taller-growing shrubs and trees. In 
the woods, therefore, their occupancy of any given place 
where trees may grow is but temporary: but in the fence-row 
where the farmer keeps the trees cut down, they may hold on 
indefinitely. If mowed or burned, they spring up again from 
uninjured roots. ; 
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