PLANTS AND THEIR WAYS IN 

 SOUTH AFRICA. 



CHAPTER I. 



PLANT LIFE. 



Who has not watched and enjoyed growing things ? The 

 baby is carefully weighed and measured ; the kitten, the garden, 

 and the flowers of the veld in turn absorb our attention. 



Growth means life ; and every living thing has something 

 of interest to tell if our eyes have been trained to see and we 

 have learned to think about what we see. 



In studying plants we find great differences in the plant 

 kingdom, and how as living things they can change their form 

 and habits of growth so as to fit theaiselves to widely differing 

 conditions of life, for plants cannot choose where they would 

 grow. In doing so, the members of one plant family come to 

 look so unlike one another that it becomes difficult to detect 

 any family resemblance; while members of different families 

 look enough alike sometimes " to be brothers and sisters," for 

 plants that have come from the same parents in past years are 

 grouped together in a family or order. We are surprised to 

 find that dodder, which fastens its threads upon lucerne and 

 chokes it and robs it of its food, belongs to the highly re- 

 spectable family of the sweet potato. 



When lavish Nature sows her seed, some, it is true, " falls 

 upon stony places and withers away," but some lays hold of the 

 rocks and changes them into soil, so that one dainty pink-and- 

 white Crassiila which grows on our hillsides rejoices in the 

 name Saxifraga, the rock-breaker. 



It would be difficult to say where plants are not found ; on 

 the heights of the Drakensberg, and even higher ranges, flowers 



i 



