I90 Plants and their Ways in South Africa 



send out a long radicle, which turns around and plants itself 

 upon the same EupJwrbia. 



Some fruits explode and send their seeds forcibly away. 

 A choice legume was ready to be mounted on a herbarium 

 sheet ; suddenly it exploded, twisted back, and all but one 

 seed disappeared. Eupiiorbia fruits similarly set up quite a 

 bombardment when they are ripe. Some fruits of the order 



Fig. 189. — [''UpJiam scatters its seeds by breaking from its moorings and 

 rolling over llie veld. (Photograph by L. Grant.) 



Acanthaceas are mucilaginous and explode when wet instead 

 of dry. 



An Oxalis seed has a fleshy cup-shaped aril. When this 

 dries it curls inside out instantaneously and the seeds are 

 scattered some distance. 



New plants sometime-; enter a country in coffee or in 

 forage. Along railways we sometimes see flower faces that seem 

 to have lost their way. The little wliite clover clinging close 

 to the sod by the grassy borders of sloots lifts up its head, and 

 its delicate breath reaches us freighted with a message from 

 distant lands. 



