The Romance of Plant Life

CHAPTER I

THE ACTIVITY OF VEGETABLES

Plants which move – Sensitive Plant – A tourist from Neptune – The World's and the British harvest – Working of green leaves – Power of sunshine – Work done by an acre of plants – Coltsfoot, dandelion, pansies, in sunshine and in cold – Woodsorrel and crocus – Foxglove – Leaves and light – Adventures of a carbon atom – The sap – Cabbages and oaks requiring water – Traveller's tree – The water in trees – An oasis in Greece – The associate life of its trees and flowers.

WHEN we remember either the general appearance or the way in which a cabbage or a turnip appears to exist, it does not seem possible to call them active. It is difficult to imagine anything less lively than an ordinary vegetable. They seem to us the very model of dullness, stupidity, and slowness; they cannot move even from one field to the next; they are "fast rooted in the soil"; "they languidly adjust their vapid vegetable loves" like Tennyson's Oak.

In fact one usually speaks of vegetating when anybody is living a particularly dull, unexciting kind of life in one particular place.

And it even seems as if the books, which are supposed to give us the best information about the study of plants, and which are not very attractive little books, quite agree with the ordinary views of the subject.

For one finds in them that plants differ from animals in being "incapable of motion." This, of course, just means that an animal, or rather most animals, can walk, swim, or fly about, whilst plants have roots and do not move from one spot to another. But it is not true to say that plants cannot move, for most plants grow, which means that they move, and in some few cases, we find that plants behave very much in the same way as animals do when they are touched or excited in any way.

We shall have to speak about tendrils, roots, and insect-catching plants later on. But it is perhaps the Sensitive Plant which shows most distinctly that it can shrink back or shrink together when it is bruised or roughly handled.

It will be described in its place, but just to show that this plant can move of its own accord, it is only necessary to hold a lighted or burning match about an inch or so below the end of a long leaf. If one does this then all the little leaflets begin to fold up, and finally the main stalk droops; soon afterwards other leaves higher up the stalk begin to be affected in the same way, and fall limply down one after the other. It is supposed that this movement frightens a grazing animal, who will imagine there is something uncanny about the plant and leave it alone. There are many respects in which this reaction of the Sensitive Plant resembles that found in animals. It does not take place if the plant is chloroformed or treated with ether; the leaves also get "fatigued" if too often handled, and refuse to rise up again.

There are, however, only a very few plants in which an immediate, visible answer to a stimulus can be detected. But all plants are at work; they have periods of rest which correspond to our sleep, but during their ordinary working hours they never slacken off, but continue vigorously active.

The life of man is so short that it is difficult to realize all that is being done by the world of plants. It is necessary to get beyond our human ideas of time. That is most conveniently done by considering how our plant world would strike an inhabitant of the planet Neptune. Our theoretical Neptunian would be accustomed to a year of 60,127 days (164 of our years); we will suppose that three of our years are a Neptunian week, and that ten of our days are about three-quarters of a Neptunian hour, whilst two earth-hours would be a minute to him.

If such a being were to observe our earth, he would be astonished at the rapidity of our vegetable world. The buds would seem to him to swell visibly; in the course of an hour or two, the bare boughs of the trees would clothe themselves with the luxuriant greenery of midsummer. Hops would fly round and round their poles, climbing at the rate of a foot a minute. Bare places, such as the gravel heaps near a sandpit, or the bare railroad tracks at a siding, would be perhaps in one week entirely covered by rich grass and wild flowers. In six Neptunian months a forest of graceful larches would spring up to a height of seventy or eighty feet.

So that, if one thinks Neptunially, the activity of plants can be easily realized.

The truth is that we are so familiar with common annual events, such as the regular harvest every year, that we never seem to realize what it means. There are some 1,400,000,000 human beings on the earth to-day, and they entirely depend on the work done every year by cultivated and wild plants.

Even in one of the least agricultural of all civilized countries, such as Great Britain, the cultivation of plants is still the largest national industry. In 1897 we grew enough corn to give a ration of 1lb. per diem to every inhabitant for 68 days, and we manage to get a large amount from every acre (28 to 33 bushels per acre). In most other countries the relative importance of land and of agriculture generally is very much greater than it is in Britain.

Moreover, it seems at first sight as if all this harvest had been made out of nothing at all. Plants do take in a small amount of mineral matter from the earth, but these minerals form but a very little part of the bulk of a tree or any vegetable substance.

A piece of wood can be burnt up in a fire and very little indeed of it is left. A few ashes will indeed remain, which are the minerals taken in from the earth, but all the rest has vanished into the atmosphere. The water which was contained in the wood has become steam and is evaporated; the woody matter consisted chiefly of compounds of a chemical substance, carbon, which also becomes an invisible gas (carbonic acid gas) in a fire and goes back into the atmosphere.

When the piece of wood was formed in a growing tree, it is easy to see where the water came from: it was taken in by the roots. Just as flowers drink up the water in a vase, and wither if they do not receive enough, so all plants suck up water by their roots. The carbonic acid gas is taken into plants through their leaves and is worked up into sugar, starch, wood, and other matters inside the plant.

But there is another very interesting point about the way in which wood is burnt in a fire; heat and light are obtained from a wood fire. Where did that heat and light come from?

If you walk in summer, under a tree in full leaf, it is much cooler than it is in the sunshine outside. This shows what happens: the sunshine has been taken up or absorbed by the leaves of the tree. It does not pass through the foliage, but the heat and light are stopped by the leaves.

The light and heat which were used up by the leaves in making wood, sugar, and starch come back again when that wood or starch is burnt.

So that the burning up of a bit of wood is just the opposite to the formation of that wood in sunshine in a living tree. The important point is that it is the sunshine which is used by plants to make all these refractory bodies, such as water, carbonic acid gas, and others, unite together to form sugar, starch, and wood.

As the earth revolves upon its axis, sunlight falls successively on every acre of land. Almost everywhere it is intercepted by green foliage. Each leaf of every plant receives and absorbs as much as it can, and, for so long as the light lasts, its living particles are hard at work: water or sap is hurrying up the stem and streaming out of the leaves as water vapour. Carbonic acid gas also is hurrying into the leaves; inside these latter first sugar and then starch is being manufactured, so that the green cells become filled with starch or sugar.

So soon as the light fails, the work begins to slacken. When darkness sets in, the starch changes to sugar and passes down the leaf-stalk into the stem, where it is used up in growth, in the formation of new wood or in supplying the developing flowers or young buds.

Next morning when the sunlight touches the plant all its little living cells set to work again, and another day's task is begun. It is very difficult to understand what is going on inside the leaf. If you were to imagine a square yard of leaves all taking in sunshine and making starch as they do in fine weather; then if you weighed all these leaves, and then weighed them again one hour after they had been in the sunshine, of course that square yard of leaf surface should be heavier, because a certain amount of starch has been formed in it. The amount actually made in one hour has been estimated by Dr. Horace Brown as 1/500 lb. So that 100 square yards of leaves working in sunshine for five hours might make one pound of starch. But one can estimate the activity of plants in another way. Look at the amount of work done by the Grass, etc., on an acre of pasture land in one year. This might entirely support a cow and calf during the summer; all the work done by these animals, as well as all the work which can be done on the beef which they put on, is due to the activity of the grasses on that acre. Moreover it is not only these large animals that are supported, but every mouse, every bird, every insect, and every worm which lives on that piece of ground, derives all its energy from the activity of the plants thereon.

All work which we do with our brains or muscles involves the consumption of food which has been formed by plants under the warm rays of the sun.

So that man's thoughts and labour, as well as that of every living creature, is in the first instance rendered possible by sunshine.

But the sunlight, besides this all-important function, affects plants in other ways.

One of the most interesting of the early spring flowers is the Coltsfoot. On bare blackish and unsightly heaps of shale one may see quantities of its golden blossoms. Now if one looks at them on a fine sunny day, every single blossom will be widely opened and each will turn towards the sun.

In wet cold weather every blossom will hang its head and be tightly closed up. Exactly the same may be observed with the Dandelion, which is, indeed, still more sensitive than the Coltsfoot. In cold wet weather it is so tightly closed that it is barely possible to make out the yellow colour of the flower, but on warm sunny days it opens wide: every one of its florets drinks in as much as possible of the genial sunshine. Both opening and closing are produced by the warmth and light of the sun's rays.

It is also the same with Pansies. On a fine day they spread out widely, but in cold wet weather the heads hang over and the whole flower shrinks together.

Perhaps the most interesting of them all are the little Woodsorrel and the Crocus.

Both are exceedingly sensitive to sunlight, or rather to the cold. A mere cloud passing over the sun on a fine spring morning will close up the flowers of the Crocus. In cold weather, if you bring one of its flowers indoors and put it near a bright light it will open widely, sometimes in a few minutes.

What produces these changes? It is very difficult to say, but every change helps towards the general good of the plant. In warm sunny weather insects are flying about, and they can enter the flower if it is open. These insects help in setting the seed (as we shall see in another chapter). In cold wet weather the flowers are best closed, as the rain might injure the florets and because also no insects are abroad.

Both the Foxglove and the Blue Vetch (Vicia Cracca) are specially ingenious in their way of obtaining light. For the stalk of every separate blossom bends so that its head turns to the best lighted or sunniest side. Thus, if you have Foxgloves planted against a wall, every flower will turn away from it; if you plant them in a circular bed, every one turns to the outside, so that every flower can get the sunlight.

Every one who has kept plants in a window knows that the stems turn towards the light. This has the effect of placing the leaves where they can get as much sunshine as possible. The leaves themselves are also affected by sunlight. They seem to stretch out in such a way that they absorb as much of it as they can.

That, of course, is what they ought to do, for they want to obtain as much as possible of the sunlight to carry on the work of forming sugar and starch inside the leaf.

Not only each leaf by itself endeavours to place itself in the best light-position, but all the leaves on the same spray of, for instance, Elm, Lime, or Horsechestnut, arrange themselves so that they interfere with one another as little as possible.1 Very little light is lost by escaping between the leaves, and very few of the leaves are overshaded by their neighbours on the same branch.

Thus all co-operate in sunlight-catching. But, when a number of different plants are competing together to catch the light on one square yard of ground, their leaves try to overreach and get beyond their neighbours.

On such a square yard of ground, it is just the competition amongst the plants, that makes it certain that every gleam of light is used by one or other of them.

Every one of all those plants of itself alters the slope of its leaves and turns its stems so as to get as much light as possible.

This light, as we have seen, is taken in by the plant. It is used to make the gas, carbonic acid,2 unite with water: when these are made to join together, they form sugar; if the sugar is burnt the heat and light appear again.

By changing the amount and arrangement of the molecules in sugar, starch or vegetable fats, and many other substances can be formed. But it is the sunlight that makes all this possible.

Thus the sun not merely supplies the motive power for all animal and vegetable activity but, by its influence, flowers, leaves, and stems move and turn in such ways that they are in the most convenient position to intercept its light.

The sunlight, though all-important in the life of most plants, kills many kinds of bacteria and bacilli which love the darkness. The well-known radium rays are also destructive to bacteria, and hinder the growth of certain fungi (Becquerel's rays have a similar effect). The X-rays are not so well understood, but one can close the leaflets of the Sensitive Plant by means of them.

Carbonic acid gas forms but a small proportion of the atmosphere which surrounds a growing plant. Yet there is no lack of it, for when the leaf is at work forming sugar the particles of gas are rushing into the leaf, and other particles come from elsewhere to take their place. Every fire and every breath given off by an animal yields up carbonic acid, so that it is constantly in circulation.

This is more easily seen by tracing the probable history of an atom of carbon. We will suppose that it enters a grass leaf as carbonic acid gas and becomes starch: next evening it will become sugar and may pass from cell to cell up the stem to where the fruit or grain is ripening. It will be stored up as starch in the grain. This grass will become hay and in due course be eaten by a bullock. The starch is changed and may be stored up in the fat of the animal's body. When this is eaten at somebody's dinner, the fat will most probably be consumed or broken up; this breaking up may be compared to a fire, for heat is given off, and the heat in this case will keep up the body-temperature of the person. The carbon atom will again become carbonic acid gas, for it will take part of the oxygen breathed in, and be returned to the atmosphere as carbonic acid gas when the person is breathing.

Another atom of carbon might enter the leaves of a tree: it will be sent down as sugar into the trunk and perhaps stored up as vegetable fat for the winter. Next spring the vegetable fat becomes starch and then sugar: as sugar it will go to assist in forming woody material. It may remain as wood for a very long time, possibly 150 to 200 years: then the tree falls and its wood begins to decay.

The bark begins to break and split because beetles and woodlice and centipedes are burrowing between the bark and the wood. Soon a very minute spore of a fungus will somehow be carried inside the bark, very likely sticking to the legs of a beetle. This will germinate and begin to give out dissolving ferments which, with the aid of bacteria, attack the wood. Our carbon atom is probably absorbed into the fungus. Very soon the mushroom-like heads of this fungus begin to swell and elongate; they burst through the bark and form a clump of reddish-yellow Paddock-stools. A fly comes to the fungus and lays an egg in it. This egg becomes a fat, unpleasant little maggot which eats the fungus, and amongst others devours our carbon atom, which again becomes fat in its body. Then a tomtit or other small bird comes along and eats the maggot. That bird stays out too late one evening and is eaten by an owl. The owl, satisfied with a good meal, allows itself to be surprised and shot by a keeper. When its body is nailed to a door and decays away, the carbon atom again takes up oxygen and becomes carbonic acid gas, which escapes into the atmosphere, and is ready for a fresh series of adventures.

We must now consider the water which with carbonic acid gas makes up sugar, etc. All plants contain a large percentage of water. This may be as much as 95 to 98 per cent in water plants, and 50 to 70 per cent. in ordinary tissues; it is contained in every sort of vegetable substance.

But there is also a stream of water or sap which is almost always entering the roots, rising up the stem, and passing into the leaves. On these leaves there are hundreds of minute openings called stomata, by which the water escapes as water-vapour into the atmosphere. A single oak leaf may have 2,000,000 of these stomata.

It is this current of sap which keeps the leaf fresh and vigorous; it is also by this current that every living cell is supplied with water and kept in a strong, healthy condition.

The amount of water used in this way is very great; in four months an acre of cabbages will transpire or give out through its leaves 3,500,000 pints of water and an acre of hops from 5-1/2 to 7 millions. A single oak tree, supposed to have 700,000 leaves, must apparently have given off into the atmosphere during five months 230,000 lb. of water.

Sometimes the water is so abundant in the plant that it collects as drops on the tips of the leaves and falls off as fluid water. A very young greenhouse plant (Caladium nymphaefolium) was found by Molisch to give off 190 water-drops a minute, and in one night it exuded one-seventeenth of a pint.

The water is found stored up in the stems or leaves of plants, especially those of hot or dry climates. The Madagascar Traveller's Tree, Ravenala, has a considerable amount of water in a hollow at the base of its leaf, and it is possible to drink this water. The usual story is to the effect that a panting traveller finds this palm in the middle of the desert, and saves his life by quenching his thirst with its crystal-clear water. Unfortunately the tree never grows far from marshy ground or springs, and the water, which I tasted for curiosity, had an unpleasant vegetable taste, with reminiscences of bygone insect life.

These are, of course, exceptional cases; as a rule the tiny root-hairs search and explore the soil; the sap or ascending current passes up the stem and pours out into the atmosphere. There the vapour is hurried off by winds, and eventually condenses and, falling as snow or rain on the earth, again sinks down into the soil.

It is very difficult to understand how the sap or water rises in the trunks of tall trees; we know that along the path of the sap inside, the root-hairs and other cells in the root, the various cells in the stem, and finally those of the leaf, are all kept supplied and distended or swollen out with water. All these living cells seem to have the power of absorbing or sucking in water,3 and eventually they are so full and distended within, that the internal pressure becomes almost incredible. Wieler found in the young wood of a Scotch fir that the pressure was sixteen atmospheres, or 240 lb. to the square inch. Dixon, when experimenting with leaf-cells, found ten, twenty, or even thirty atmospheres (150 to 450 lb. to the square inch). No locomotive engine has cylinders strong enough to resist such internal pressures as these. It is an extraordinary fact, and one almost incredible, that the cells can stand such pressures.

Yet these minute living cells not only exist but work at this high tension, and, in some cases, they live to about fifty years.

In this favoured country of Great Britain, it is unusual to find any serious lack of water. But in Italy or Greece, every drop of it is valuable and carefully husbanded.

Sometimes in such arid dry countries, a small spring of water will form around itself a refreshing oasis of greenery surrounded everywhere by dreary thorn-scrub or monotonous sand. All the plants in such a spot have their own special work to do: the graceful trees which shade the spring, the green mosses on the stones, the fresh grass and bright flowers or waving reeds, are all associated in a common work. They protect and shelter each other; their dead leaves are used to form soil; their roots explore and break up the ground. It is true that they are competing with one another for water and for light, but they are all forming a mutual protection, and producing an annual harvest.

In a climate like our own we cannot, like the Greek, suppose a Nymph in the shape of a lovely young woman watching over the spring, for she would infallibly suffer from rheumatism and ague.

But every living cell in every plant in such an oasis depends upon the water of the spring. All the plants there form an association which can be quite well compared to a city or some other association of human beings. They do compete, for they struggle to do the most work for the good of the community, and they incidentally obtain their livelihood in the process.

Most plant societies or associations such as those which cover Great Britain are not so obviously dependent on one particular spring, but the plants composing them are associated in a very similar way.

CHAPTER II

ON SAVAGES, DOCTORS, AND PLANTS

Savages knew Botany – First lady doctors and botanical excursions – True drugs and horrible ornaments – Hydrophobia cure – Cloves – Mustard – Ivy – Roses and Teeth – How to keep hair on – How to know if a patient will recover – Curious properties of a mushroom – The Scythian lamb – Quinine: history and use – Safflower – Romance of ipecacuanha – Wars of the spice trade – Cinnamon, dogwood, and indigo – Romance of pepper – Babylonian and Egyptian botanists – Chinese discoveries – Theophrastus – Medieval times – The first illustrated book – Numbers of plants known – Discoveries of painters and poets.

IF we look back to the time when all men and women were mere savages, living like the Esquimaux or the Australians of to-day, then it is certain that every person was much interested in plants. Nothing was so interesting as daily food, because no one was ever certain of even one good meal in the day.

So that in those early times there was a very sound, well-grounded knowledge of roots, bulbs, and fruits. They knew all that were good to eat, all that could possibly be eaten in time of famine and starvation, and also every poisonous and unwholesome plant.

Some savage genius must have discovered that certain plants were "good medicine"; that certain tree-barks helped to check fever, and that others were worth trying when people had successfully devoured more than they could comfortably digest. The life of a savage meant tremendous meals, followed by days of starvation; even now, when young children are fed on rice in India, a thread is tied round their waist, and, when this bursts, they are not allowed to eat any more.

Very probably some of these early physicians were lady doctors usually of a certain age. Men were too busy with their hunting and warfare to have time to try experiments with drugs, to make concoctions of herbs all more or less disquieting and to find out if these were of any use.