3 
during the first year will enable it to produce a much 
larger number of flowers than is commonly the case in 
annual plants. In most biennials the food material is 
stored in some underground part of the plant such as the 
swollen ‘root’ of the turnip or beet, the leaves during the 
first season forming a tuft or rosette close to the ground. 
_ Lastly we have perennials which are much more varied 
in character than the first two groups of plants. These 
latter are always comparatively soft in texture, but 
perennials include both herbaceous and woody forms 
such as trees and shrubs. The herbaceous again are of 
two types, firstly those which persist throughout the winter 
like violets and primroses, and secondly those which die 
down in the autumn leaving a persistent root or root- 
stock underground, from which the plant renews its 
growth in spring. Plants of this kind like the iris, peony, 
larkspur, Michaelmas daisy and many other favourites 
of our herbaceous borders have like biennials a large store 
of food material in their underground organs. This 
enables -them in most instances, not only to produce 
annually a crop of flowers but to branch out underground 
and develop into ever-spreading clumps, which in many 
cases require repeated breaking up and thinning just as we 
require to cut back our bushes and trees. In some cases 
these underground portions of perennial plants do not 
remain attached in one mass, but when ihe plant dies down, 
a good deal of the underground part dies away too, leav- 
ing isolated portions, so that in place of one individual 
we find many fragments which would seem to be offspring 
though they are really only remnants of the original 
parent. Such offsets we have in the case of the tubers of 
the potato, which represent the rounded swollen ends of 
underground shoots that have become entirely separated 
one from the other. Though this is really only a breaking 
up of the original plant, it is often spoken of as vegetative 
reproduction but must not be confused with seed reproduc- 
tion, which is always the result of the fertilisation of 
flowers. It is important to differentiate these two methods 
of propagation, particularly as in the case of the potato 
the tubers used for setting in spring are termed “seed 
potatoes,” though they have really nothing to do with 
seeds. Vegetative reproduction does not replace seed re- 
production but is an additional means of propagation, 
often of the greatest use both in nature and in cultivation. 
