PLANTS MULTIPLY BY MEANS OF STEMS. 
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the best it can, and to some extent one supplements the 
other, with the result that at all times from spring to fall 
there is a close mat of living green which delights the eye 
and is pleasant to the feet that tread upon it. In soft 
ground, with plenty of room, a bit of quick or quack 
grass, or Bermuda, will extend in a year three to five feet 
or more in one direction. 
June grass, quick grass, Bermuda grass, redtop, and 
white clover, wherever opportunity offers, spread by 
means of jointed stems, creeping and rooting at every 
joint on the surface of the ground or a little way below. 
These are not roots at all, but true stems somewhat in 
disguise. Here may also be mentioned, as having similar 
habit, artichokes, peppermint, spearmint, barberry, Indian 
hemp, bindweed, toadflax, matrimony vine, bugle-weed, 
ostrich fern, eagle fern, sensitive fern, coltsfoot, St. John’s- 
wort, sorrel, great willow-herb, and many more. 
8. Runners establish new colonies. — The spreading of 
strawberries by runners must be familiar to every observer. 
In 1894 a student reported that a wild strawberry plant 
in the botanic garden had produced in that year 1230 
plants. Weeds were all kept away, the season was favor- 
able, the soil sandy ; but on one side, within a foot and a 
half, progress was checked by the presence of a large plant 
of another kind. The multiplication of this plant by 
seeds, in addition to that by runners, would have covered 
a still greater area of land. Other plants with runners 
much like the strawberry are : several kinds of crowfoot, 
