THE WINTER LIFE OF PLANTS. 
211 
for it comes up in March, and by the close of April has 
matured and scattered its seeds. Yet these minute seeds, 
with their microscopic rudiment of a plant, are mixed with 
the soil, from which they cannot be distinguished, and after 
lying exposed alike to the heat of summer and the cold of 
winter, germinate again at the appointed time on our rocks 
and old walls. In Pennsylvania, where the extremes of heat 
and cold are much more severe than in England, Dr ah a 
verna grows profusely, and the writer has seen the gneiss 
rocks about Philadelphia positively overspread with whitened 
patches of this little plant, towards the close of the month of 
March. 
But the greater portion of the herbaceous plants are peren- 
nials, whose leaves and flowers annually die down to their 
rhizome or underground stem, and, therefore, disappear like 
the annuals from the earth’s surface in winter. But life 
remains in the rhizome, and the next year’s growth is 
contained within the buds on the surface. The soil in this 
case shelters the buds. Hence, as soon as the frost is out 
of the ground, the plants which have been thus protected, 
issue forth from these subterranean buds, push up through 
the soil into the atmosphere, and again unfold their leaves 
and flowers on the same spot. Perennial plants, having 
the rhizome and bulb as a means of self-preservation, as 
might be naturally supposed, are not so prolific in seed as 
annuals. 
The period of seed-rest or vegetable torpor may be pro- 
longed for years, if there are not the conditions necessary for 
germination. For sixty years a bag of plants supplied the 
“ Jardin des Plantes ” annually with sensitive plants. Bindley 
mentions the germination of raspberry seeds, found in 1834, 
in an ancient barrow {tumulus), near Maiden Castle, along 
with coins of the emperor Hadrian. The seeds were found 
in a coffin thirty feet below the surface, and may have been 
from 1,600 to 1,700 years old. 
It is thus that the germs of vegetable life are preserved. 
The Winter-life of Plants ! It is one of slumber and inac- 
tivity, comparatively speaking, yet how deeply interesting its 
preservation. YChat, though the trees have on at present 
only their plain unattractive garb of winter leaves, yet their 
more ornamental summer-leaf dress has been carefully pre- 
pared for them, and now lies folded up in the bud, — the 
wardrobe of Nature ! They will put it on uninjured at the 
appointed time ! What matters it that the fierce north winds 
sweep the landscape of all its visible life and fertility, and 
extend still farther and farther the snowy territories of winter ? 
The flowers are all safely sheltered in their winter home, 
