TREES THAT FIGHT FIRE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 544, 22 February 1913, Page 7

TREES THAT FIGHT FIRE.

AND MUSHROOMS WHICH LIFT PAVING STONES.

The common peanut, beloved of the American small boy, and, under its alias of "monkey-nut," not unknown to the English cousin, grows in a peculiar way that Is distinctly original. The little plant sends up its shoots, with the fruit on the end of a somewhat stiff stalk, and then, before it ripens, the stem bends over, and carefully pushes the fruit underground. As pigs are said to be especially fond of these, it has been suggested that the plant doee this to hide its nuts from the porker's too inquisitive investigations ; but this can only be regarded as a supposition. There is a little mimosa that grows in the tropics which is so shy that, on being shaken or touched, it immediately closes up the dainty fronds of its little leaves, and they. remain tightly closed until they think they have given their disturber time to pass on and leave them alone. Then they slowly and cautiously open, out again until presently all the leaves are flat as before.

In the hot desert regions of Arizona and Mexico the cactus stores in its thick leaves every drop of water or dew that It can get, so that there is always a supply, not for a rainy day, but for a dry season. In reality, the spines of the cactus are the remnants of its leaves and the so-called leaves are the modified stalks.

Tn the waterless regions where the cactus grows it has very little use for leaves, that would only wither away from the heat, so it reduces them to a very effective weapon against all enemies, and then swelle the stalks to make the kind of water-tank it can best use for its purposes. The best proof of the efficiency of its reasoning is in the fact that it exists where very little else can, save a few plants which have similarly adapted themselves to circumstances.

One of the queerest things done by any plant is the extraordinary power shown by a common mushroom when it wants to grow up into the open. Tender and spongy, the slightest thing will crush its fragile substance. But this feeble thing can, and sometimes does, lift a paving-stone that happens to impede its movements towards the air and light. By what remarkable faculty of engineering is this wonder accomplished ? The carnivorous properties of some plants are well known, but they are decidedly uncanny. A plant that can lay a trap for the wily fly, and can catch him and eat him is a plant that has acquired intelligence beyond its sphere. Is it much wonder that old travellers' tales tell of trees that can catch men ? The thing is not so impossible on its own scale. But it makes one feel uncomfortable to think that such powers can be acquired at all by organisms so low as we are accustomed to regard plants. The thing i,s so common that we have ceased to wonder at it, but there is a deal of cleverness in the strategy of most flowers in supplying honsy in such a position that it acts as payment to the friendly bee for the service of pollenating the flowers that .are to reproduce the stock. There are some plants, however, which have special methods of their own. The fig even now grows its flowers inside the fruit—or, rather, the fruit we eat is the outei covering of the flowers, and to grow the large Smyrna figs a special insect has to be encouraged. For years these large figs could not be grown in California, until at last the right insect was imported to do the work.

There is a pine in the Westerrj forests of America that has so hard a cone that the imprisoned seeds cannot be propagated in the ordinary way. The best way is to burn the cone over a hot fire until it bursts, when the seeds escape. When the vast, all-devastating forest fires sweep the country, these pine cones have thsir chance, and from them the new trees grow. Does the tree know that it has to make this cunning preparation for forest fires, or risk extinction ? It looks like it. —"Answers."