STEMS 55 
Some monstrous cypress trees found in Mexico were thought 
by Professor Asa Gray to be from 4000 to 5000 years old. 
72. ‘*Stemless Plants.’?— The so-called stemless plants, 
like the dandelion (Fig. 27) and some violets, are not really 
stemless at all, but send out their leaves and flowers from 
a very short stem 
which hardly rises 
above the surface of 
the ground. 
Now, as will be 
shown later (Chap- 
ter XX1I), plants live 
subject to a very 
fierce competition ~_ 
among themselves 
and exposed to 
almost constant at- 
tacks from animals. 
Any plant which 
can grow in safety 
under the very feet 
of grazing animals 
will be es pec ially Fic. 27. The Dandelion; a so-called 
e Stemless Plant. 
likely to make its 
way in the world, since there are many places where it can 
flourish while ordinary plants would be destroyed. The 
bitter, stemless dandelion, which is almost uneatable for most 
animals, unless cooked, which les too near the earth to be 
fed upon by grazing animals, and which bears being trodden 
on with impunity, is a type of a large class of hardy weeds. 
And while plants with long stems find it to their 
account to reach up as far as possible into the sunlight, 
