:OFFSHOOTS ON RUNNERS. 



801 



Everyone knows the long runners of the Strawberry plant {Fragaria vesca). 

 Here buds arise at the intermediate nodes as well as at the tip of the runner, and these 

 develop into new plants after the thread-like connecting portions have perished. 

 Suppose a Strawberry stock sends out three runners during the summer; each takes 

 root at 5 nodes, and from each node a bud, i.e. an offshoot, develops, so that the 

 following year the mother-stock is surrounded by fifteen daughter- plants. It should 

 be noted that the length of the intemodes in each runner is unequal. For example. 



Fig. 448.— Formation of a clustered colony by means of aerial runners in Saxi/raga flagellar is. 



in one which had extended over the ground in the shade of the wood, the first inter- 

 node was 37, the second 34, the third 31, the fourth 30, and the fifth and last 

 22 cm.; thus the ofishoots were the closer together the greater their distance from 

 the mother-plant. ■ Next summer fifteen new offshoots were again formed from 

 each of the original fifteen, arranged in exactly the same way, and in the forest- 

 glade, where two years previously there had been only a single Strawberry plant 

 occupying a space of 50 sq. cm., there would now be 200 plants distributed over a 

 space of about 3600 sq. cm. 



The lesser Spearwort (Ranunculus reptans), the Ground Ivy (Glechoma 

 hderacea), and the creeping Cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans) display quite as 



Vol. II. 



