1260 
MESSES. J. B. LA WES, J. H. GILBERT, AND M. T. MASTERS, 
surface-feeding Leguminosae, tliat the Lotus corniculatus, with its deeper roots, hardy 
habit, and comparative independence of surface-food and surface-moisture, appears to 
be able to maintain or to improve its position. 
Lathyrus pratensis. 
This is a perennial plant with a root-stock greatly differing in character from that 
of the Lotus corniculatus , being very long, slender, wiry, black in colour, creeping, or 
in some cases descending vertically to considerable depths, slightly branched, but 
never forming thick fleshy branches like the Lotus. On the other hand, it produces 
adventitious buds, and roots much more freely. By these comparatively superficial 
roots it is enabled to avail itself more fully than the Lotus does of the food in the 
surface soil. The stems are slender, weak, angled or flattish, trailing, or supporting 
themselves by means of the leaf-tendrils. It begins to grow late in the spring, and 
flowers abundantly, but it does not as a rule ripen its seeds on the plots before cutting. 
The characteristics which favour its growth are its hardiness and robust constitution, 
its creeping root-stock, and its tendrils which enable it to avail itself, at little cost to 
itself, of the stems of its neighbours, and it may be to strangle them. Its duration is 
also probably increased by the circumstance that it so rarely perfects seeds on the 
plots. The peculiar manner in which the leaves are folded flat in the bud, so as to 
occupy little space and enable the plant to push its way through and between its 
competitors, is also noteworthy. 
The following table shows the relative degree of prominence of this plant. 
