462 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Nov., 1899. 
plant. Then the growing point peeps up into daylight, and begins to do its 
share towards that end. The swelling increases, begins to turn brown, and 
forms the tuber or nut; the roots, too, get stronger, and turn brown; the scales 
of the growing shoot, which were arrested in their development when under- 
ground, now assert themselves, and come forth as grass-like leaves up to 
9 or 10 inches long, of a dark-green colour, and having a keel-shaped midrib 
down the centre. The leaves are generally about a dozen in number. 
As soon as the leaves are well established above ground, and are drawing 
sufficient supplies from the atmosphere, white shoots are protruded from the 
collar just below the ground from amongst the roots. These at first take a 
slightly downward course, but, when clear of the parent plant, run horizontally, 
and go through exactly the same course of life as the predecessor from which 
they sprung; and in this way is formed the widening circle of progeny shown 
in Plate I., where a is the shoot with the tuber beginning to form; 6, the tuber 
more advanced, and beginning to emit roots; ¢, the plant well advanced above 
ground, and, already sending out another colony “on its own,” but not yet 
flowering; d and e, the flower-spikes. 
When the nut-grass has sent out two or three of these colonising shoots, it 
sets about flowering, and devotes itself exclusively to that particular business. 
The tuber, which we have traced so far, becomes harder, the shoots connecting 
with the other colonies thrown off become mere dried-up threads, and the flower- 
spike is sent up. This is three-cornered, from 9 to 10 inches long in cultivated 
land, and bearing at the top the flower somewhat curiously arranged. First, 
there are three small leaves like those on the plant (you will remember that I am 
sparing you botanical descriptions) ; then just inside these leayes are three 
little spikes standing well up on the three corners of the stem; then between 
these are three smaller spikes, not so tall; and in the centre of all a little 
spike on a shorter stalk than the three outer ones. 
When the business of flowering is over, the plant dies down, and all trouble 
with it is over for that year; but the nut at the base of the plant does not die. 
It is lying all the winter in readiness to send out its horizontal shoots the . 
moment the warm feel of the earth tells it that it is time to begin its life 
business. It will never visit the sunlight again, but its children to be born next 
spring will, and it is ready to send them on their way. 
lt has been said that when the nut-grass begins to flower it devotes itself 
exclusively to the matter in hand. This is its vulnerable point, because if you 
prevent it from flowering, which is the cheapest way of interfering with it, the 
nut-grass at once sets about repairing damage; and this it does, not by pro- 
ducing new leayes and flowers on the injured shoot, but by sending up a new 
shoot which has to draw on the old tuber for its initial start and te major 
portion of its SED Ore The nut gets smaller and weaker just as a seed potato 
gets weaker and shrivels when the shoots are sent above ground, and for the 
same reason. Now, if you stop the new shoot, the nut-grass will not give in by 
any means. It cannot. Itsimply sends up another shoot, sometimes two, but 
now ludicrously weak compared to the brave strong fellow which showed above 
ground in the first instance. The cold weather is coming by this time and 
fighting your battle for you. The energies of the plant are wellnigh exhausted, 
and it is a very sick tuber which goes to sleep that winter, and by no means up 
to the work of colonising which it has to iderteee the following spring. For 
_you see it cannot gain any strength when its leaves are not in active work ; and 
as it goes to sleep, so it wakes up. Next year you have an advantage oyer your 
enemy, but if you let it alone it will soon recuperate. In digging your ground 
(Lam now speaking of gardens) during the winter, it is as well to dig nut-grass 
out roughly, but the faddishness of picking up every bit, which some insist on, 
isa fearful waste of time and money; while as to digging during the summer a 
little patch at a time, and slowly picking it, there is no better way to insure the 
spread and continuance of nut-grass in your land. 
This finishes the first year’s battle m the war with nut-grass, but it is a 
victory which must be followed up, or the impression made upon the foe will be 
