Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber's note:
Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. Please see the
end of this book for further notes.

Such a bridge is described by Sir J. D. Hooker in his _Himalayan
Journals_.]

THE ROMANCE OF
PLANT LIFE

INTERESTING DESCRIPTIONS OF
THE STRANGE AND CURIOUS IN
THE PLANT WORLD

BY

G. F. SCOTT ELLIOT

M.A. CANTAB., B.SC. EDIN., F.R.G.S., F.L.S., ETC.

AUTHOR OF

"A NATURALIST IN MID AFRICA," "NATURE STUDIES--PLANT LIFE"
ETC.

WITH THIRTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS

PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
LONDON: SEELEY & CO. LIMITED
1907

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

THE ACTIVITY OF VEGETABLES
PAGE
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 13

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, logwood, 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 27

CHAPTER III

A TREE'S PERILOUS LIFE

Hemlock spruce and pine forests--Story of a pine seedling--Its
struggles and dangers--The gardener's boot--Turpentine of
pines--The giant sawfly--Bark beetles--Their effect on music--Storm
and strength of trees--Tall trees and long seaweeds--Eucalyptus,
big trees--Age of trees--Venerable sequoias, oaks,
chestnuts, and olives--Baobab and Dragontree--Rabbits as
woodcutters--Fire as protection--Sacred fires--Dug-out and
birch-bark canoes--Lake dwellings--Grazing animals and forest
destruction--First kind of cultivation--Old forests in England
and Scotland--Game-preserving 40

CHAPTER IV

ON FORESTS

The forests of the Coal Age--Monkey-puzzle and ginkgo--Wood,
its uses, colour, and smell--Lasting properties of wood--Jarrah
and deodar--Teak--Uses of birch--Norwegian barques--Destruction
of wood in America--Paper from wood pulp--Forest
fires--Arid lands once fertile--Britain to be again covered by
forests--Vanished country homes--Ashes at farmhouses--Yews
in churchyards--History of Man _versus_ Woods in Britain 55

CHAPTER V

FLOWERS

Man's ideas of the use of flowers--Sprengel's great
discovery--Insects, not man, consulted--Pollen carried to set
seed--Flowers and insects of the Whinstone Age--Coal Age
flowers--Monkey-puzzle times--Chalk flowers--Wind-blown
pollen--Extravagant expenditure of pollen in them--Flower of the
pine--Exploding flowers--Brilliant alpines--Intense life in
flowers--Colour contrasts--Lost bees--Evening flowers--Humming
birds and sunbirds--Kangaroo--Floral clocks--Ages of flowers--How
to get flowers all the year round--Ingenious contrivances--Yucca
and fig--Horrible-smelling flowers--Artistic tastes of birds,
insects, and man 68

CHAPTER VI

ON UNDERGROUND LIFE

Mother-earth--Quarries and Chalk-pits--Wandering atoms--The
soil or dirt--Populations of Worms, Birds, Germs--Fairy
Rings--Roots miles long--How roots find their way--How they do the
right thing and seek only what is good for them--Root _versus_
stones--Roots which haul bulbs about--Bishopsweed--Wild
Garlic--Dandelion, Plantain--Solomon's Seal--Roots throwing
down walls--Strength of a seedling root 82

CHAPTER VII

HIGH MOUNTAINS, ARCTIC SNOWS

The life of a cherry tree--Cherries in March--Flowering of
gorse--Chickweed's descendants--Forest fires in Africa--Spring
passing from Italy to the frozen North--Life in the
Arctic--Dwarfs--Snow-melting soldanellas--Highland Arctic-Alpine
plants--Their history--Arctic Britain--Edelweiss--An
Alpine garden 97

CHAPTER VIII

SCRUB

Famous countries which were covered by it--Trees which are colonizing
the desert--Acacia scrub in East Africa, game and lions--Battle
between acacia and camels, etc.--Australian half-deserts--Explorers'
fate--Queen Hatasu and the first geographical
expedition recorded--Frankincense, myrrh, gums, and odorous
resins--Manna--Ladanum--Burning bush--Olives, oranges, and
perfume farms--Story of roses--Bulgarian attar of roses--How
pomade is made--Cutting down of forests and Mohammed 107

CHAPTER IX

ON TEA, COFFEE, CHOCOLATE, AND TOBACCO

English tea-drinking--Story of our tea--Assam coolies--Manufacture
in India and China--Celestial moisture--Danger of tea--The
hermit and his intelligent goat--Government coffee and
cafés--Chicory--Chocolate--Aztecs--Kola and its curious
effects--Tobacco--Sir Walter Raleigh--Great emperors and
tobacco--Could we grow tobacco?--Story of a Sumatra cigar--Danger
of young people smoking tobacco 120

CHAPTER X

ON DESERTS

What are deserts like?--Camel-riding--Afterglow--Darwin in
South America--Big Bad Lands--Plants which train themselves
to endure thirst--Cactus and euphorbia--Curious shapes--Grey
hairs--Iceplant--Esparto grass--Retama--Colocynth--Sudden
flowering of the Karoo--Short-lived flowers--Colorado Desert--Date
palms on the Nile--Irrigation in Egypt--The creaking
Sakkieh--Alexandria hills--The Nile and Euphrates 131

CHAPTER XI

THE STORY OF THE FIELDS

What was Ancient Britain?--Marshes and bittern--Oak forest--Pines--Savage
country--Cornfield--Fire--Ice--Forest--Worms--Paleolithic family--The
first farmers--Alfred the Great's first Government agricultural
leaflet--Dr. Johnson--Prince Charlie's time--Misery of our
forefathers--Oatmeal, milk, and cabbages--Patrick Miller--Tennyson's
_Northern Farmer_--Flourishing days of 1830 to 1870--Derelict
farmhouses and abandoned crofts--Where have the people gone?--Will
they come back? 143

CHAPTER XII

ON PLANTS WHICH ADD TO CONTINENTS

Lake Aral and Lake Tschad--Mangrove swamps of West Africa--New
mudbanks colonized--Fish, oysters, birds, and mosquitoes--Grasping
roots and seedlings--Extent of mangroves--Touradons
of the Rhone--Sea-meadows of Britain--Floating pollen--Reeds
and sedges of estuarine meadows--Storms--Plants on
ships' hulls--Kelps and tangles in storms--Are seaweeds
useless?--Fish 156

CHAPTER XIII

ROCKS, STONES, AND SCENERY

An old wall--Beautiful colours--Insects--Nature's chief aim--Hard
times of lichens--Age of lichens--Crusts--Mosses--Lava flows
of great eruptions--Colonizing plants--Krakatoa--Vesuvius--Greenland
volcanoes--Sumatra--Shale-heaps--Foreigners on railway
lines--Plants keep to their own grounds--Precipices and
rocks--Plants which change the scenery--Cañons in America 166

CHAPTER XIV

ON VEGETABLE DEMONS

Animals and grass--Travellers in the elephant grass--Enemies in
Britain--Cactus _versus_ rats and wild asses--Angora kids _v._
acacia--The Wait-a-bit thorn--Palm roots and snails--Wild yam
_v._ pig--Larch _v._ goat--Portuguese and English gorse--Hawthorn
_v._ rabbits--Briers, brambles, and barberry--The bramble
loop and sick children or ailing cows--Briers of the
wilderness--Theophrastus and Phrygian goats--Carline near the
Pyramids--Calthrops--Tragacanth--Hollies and their ingenious
contrivances--How thorns and spines are formed--Tastes
of animals 177

CHAPTER XV

ON NETTLES, SENSITIVE PLANTS, ETC.

Stinging nettles at home and abroad--The use of the nettle--Sham
nettles--Sensitive plants--Mechanism--Plants alive, under chloroform
and ether--Telegraph plant--Woodsorrel--Have plants
nerves?--Electricity in the Polar regions--Plants under electric
shocks--Currents of electricity in plants--The singing of trees
to the electro-magnetic ear--Experiments--Electrocution of
vegetables 191

CHAPTER XVI

ON FLOWERS OF THE WATER

The first plant--Seaweeds in hot baths--Breaking of the meres--Gory
Dew--Plants driven back to the water--Marsh plants--Fleur-de-Lis--Reeds
and rushes--Floating islands--Water-lilies--_Victoria
regia_--Plants 180 feet deep--Life in a pond, as seen
by an inhabitant--Fish-farming--The useful Diatom--Willows
and Alders--Polluted streams--The Hornwort--The Florida
Hyacinth--Reeds and grass-reeds--The richest lands in the
world--Papyrus of Egypt--Birds and hippopotami--Fever and
ague 200

CHAPTER XVII

ON GRASSLANDS

Where is peace?--Troubles of the grass--Roadsides--Glaciers in
Switzerland--Strength and gracefulness of grasses--Rainstorms--Dangers
of Drought and of swamping--Artificial fields--Farmer's
abstruse calculations--Grass mixtures--Tennis lawns--The
invasion of forest--Natural grass--Prairie of the United
States, Red Indian, Cowboy--Pampas and Gaucho--Thistles
and tall stories--South Africa and Boers--Hunting of the
Tartars--An unfortunate Chinese princess--Australian shepherds
herds 213

CHAPTER XVIII

POISONS

Poisoned arrows--Fish poisons--Manchineel--Curare--A wonderful
story--Antiaris--Ordeals--The Obi poison--Oracles produced
by poisons--Plants which make horses crazy and others that
remove their hair--Australian sheep and the Caustic Creeper--Swelled
head--Madness by the Darling Pea--Wild and tame
animals, how they know poisons--How do they tell one another?--The
Yew tree, when is it, and when is it not poisonous? 226

CHAPTER XIX

ON FRUITS

Bright colours of fruits--Unripe fruits and their effects--An
intemperate Fungus--Oranges--Prickly pear and the monkey--Strong
seeds--Bill-of-fare of certain birds--A wood-pigeon and beans--Ants
and seeds--Bats, rats, bears, and baboons--The rise in
weight of a Big Gooseberry--Mr. Gideon and the Wealthy
Apple--Crossing fruits--Breadfruit and banana--Dates--Figs--
Olives--Pineapples by the acre--Apples and pears--Home and Canadian
orchards 240

CHAPTER XX

WANDERING FRUITS AND SEEDS

Ships and stowaway seeds--Tidal drift--Sheep, broom, migrating
birds--Crows and acorns--Ice--Squirrels--Long flight of birds--Seeds
in mud--Martynia and lions--The wanderings of
Xanthium--Cocoanut and South Sea Islands--Sedges and floods--Lichens
of Arctic and Antarctic--Manna of Bible--The Tumble
weeds of America--Catapult and sling fruits--Cow parsnips--Parachutes,
shuttlecocks, and kites--Cotton--The use of hairs
and wings--Monkey's Dinner-bell--Sheep-killing grasses 254

CHAPTER XXI

STORY OF THE CROPS

Bloated and unhealthy plants--Oats of the Borderers, Norsemen,
and Danes--Wheat as a wild plant--Barley--Rye--Where was
the very first harvest?--Vine in the Caucasus--Indians sowing
corn--Early weeds--Where did weeds live before cultivation?--Armies
of weeds--Their cunning and ingenuity--Gardeners' feats--The
Ideal Bean--Diseased pineapples--Raising beetroot and
carrot--Story of the travels of Sugar-cane--Indian Cupid--Beetroot
and Napoleon 269

CHAPTER XXII

PLANTS AND ANTS

Meaning of Plant Life--Captive and domesticated germs--Solomon's
observations denied by Buffon but confirmed by recent writers--Ants
as keepers and germinators of corn--Ant fields--Ants
growing mushrooms--Leaf-cutting ants--Plants which are
guarded by insects--The African bush--Ants boarded by Acacias
and by Imbauba trees--Ants kept in China and Italy--Cockchafer
_v._ ant--Scale insects--A fungus which catches worms 281

CHAPTER XXIII

THE PERIL OF INSECTS

The Phylloxera--French sport--Life history of the
Phylloxera--Cockchafer grubs--Wireworm--The misunderstood
crows--Dangerous sucklings of greenflies--"Sweat of heaven" and
"Saliva of the stars"--A parasite of a parasite of a
parasite--Buds--The apple-blossom weevil--Apple-sucker--The
codlin moth and the ripening apple--The pear midge--A careless
naturalist and his present of rare eggs--Leaf-miners--Birds
without a stain upon their characters--Birds and man--Moats--Dust
and mites--The homes of the mites--Buds, insect eggs, and parent
birds flourishing together 290

CHAPTER XXIV

RUBBER, HEMP AND OPIUM

Effects of opium--The poppy-plant and its latex--Work of the
opium-gatherer--Where the opium poppy is grown--Haschisch of the
Count of Monte Cristo--Heckling, scotching, and retting--Hempseed
and bhang--Users of haschisch--Use of india-rubber--Why
plants produce rubber--With the Indians in Nicaragua--The
Congo Free State--Scarcity of rubber--Columbus and
Torquemada--Macintosh--Gutta-percha 301

CHAPTER XXV

ON CLIMBING PLANTS

Robin-run-the-Hedge--Bramble bushes--Climbing roses--Spiny,
wiry stems of smilax--The weak young stem of a liane--The
way in which stems revolve--The hop and its little harpoons--A
climbing palm--Rapidity of turners--The effect of American life
on them--Living bridges--Rope bridges in India--The common
stitchwort--Tendrils--Their behaviour when stroked or tickled--Their
sensibility--Their grasping power--The quickness with
which they curve and their sense of weight--Charles
Darwin--Reasonableness of plants--Corkscrew spirals--The pads
of the Virginian Creeper--The ivy--Does it do harm?--Embracing
roots--Tree ivy 313

CHAPTER XXVI

PLANTS WHICH PREY ON PLANTS

The kinds of cannibals--Bacteria--Spring flowers--Pale, ghostly
Wood-flowers--Their alliance with fungi--Gooseberries growing on
trees--Orchid-hunting--The life of an orchid--The mistletoe--Balder
the Beautiful--Druids-Mistletoe as a remedy--Its parasitic
roots--The trees it prefers--The _Cactus Loranthus_--Yellow Rattle
and Eyebright, or Milk-thief, and their root-suckers--Broomrape
and toothwort--Their colour and tastes--The scales of the
toothwort which catch animalcula--Sir Stamford Raffles--A flower a
yard across--The Dodder--Its twining stem and sucker-roots--Parasites
rare, degenerate and dangerously situated 327

CHAPTER XXVII

PLANTS ATTACKING ANIMALS

Brittle Star _v._ algæ--Fungus _v._ meal-worm--Stag-headed
caterpillars--Liverwort _v._ small insects--Natural
flower-pots--Watercups of Bromeliads--Sarracenia and inquiring
insects--An unfortunate centipede--Pitcher plants: their crafty
contrivances--Blowflies defy them and spiders rob
them--Bladderwort's traps which catch small fry--Hairs and their
uses--Plants used as fly-papers--Butterwort _v._ midges--Its use
as rennet--Sundew and its sensitive tentacles--Pinning down an
insect--Suffocating and chloroforming the sundew--Venus' fly-trap
which acts like a rat-trap--Have plants a nervous system? 340

CHAPTER XXVIII

MOSSES AND MOORS

Peat-mosses and their birds--Moorlands--Cotton-grass--Scotch
whisky--Growth of peat-moss--A vegetable pump--Low-lying
and moorland mosses--Eruptions and floods of peat--Colonizing
by heather and Scotch fir--Peat-mosses as museums--Remains
of children and troopers--Irish elk--Story of the plants in
Denmark--Rhododendrons and peat--Uses of peat--Reclaiming the
mosses near Glasgow 353