THE ROOT.
1. Plants in their perfect form consist of four principal parts,--the Root,
Stem, Leaf, and Flower. It is true that the stem and flower are parts, or
remnants, or altered states, of the leaves; and that, speaking with close
accuracy, we might say, a perfect plant consists of leaf and root. But the
division into these four parts is best for practical purposes, and it will
be desirable to note a few general facts about each, before endeavouring to
describe any one kind of plant. Only, because the character of the stem
depends on the nature of the leaf and flower, we must put it last in order
of examination; and trace the development of the plant first in root and
leaf; then in the flower and its fruit; and lastly in the stem.
2. First, then, the Root.
Every plant is divided, as I just said, in the main, into two parts, and
these have opposite natures. One part seeks the light; the other hates it.
One part feeds on the air; the other on the dust.
The part that loves the light is called the Leaf. It is an old Saxon word;
I cannot get at its origin. The part that hates the light is called the
Root. {27}
In Greek, [Greek: rhiza], Rhiza.[13]
In Latin, Radix, "the growing thing," which shortens, in French, into Race,
and then they put on the diminutive 'ine,' and get their two words, Race,
and Racine, of which we keep Race for animals, and use for vegetables a
word of our own Saxon (and Dutch) dialect,--'root'; (connected with
Rood--an image of wood; whence at last the Holy Rood, or Tree).
3. The Root has three great functions:
1st. To hold the plant in its place.
2nd. To nourish it with earth.
3rd. To receive vital power for it from the earth.
With this last office is in some degree,--and especially in certain
plants,--connected, that of reproduction.
But in all plants the root has these three essential functions.
First, I said, to hold the Plant in its place. The Root is its Fetter.
You think it, perhaps, a matter of course that a plant is not to be a
crawling thing? It is not a matter of course at all. A vegetable might be
just what it is now, as compared with an animal;--might live on earth and
water instead of on meat,--might be as senseless in life, as calm in death,
and in all its parts and apparent structure {28} unchanged; and yet be a
crawling thing. It is quite as easy to conceive plants moving about like
lizards, putting forward first one root and then another, as it is to think
of them fastened to their place. It might have been well for them, one
would have thought, to have the power of going down to the streams to
drink, in time of drought;--of migrating in winter with grim march from
north to south of Dunsinane Hill side. But that is not their appointed
Fate. They are--at least all the noblest of them, rooted to their spot.
Their honour and use is in giving immoveable shelter,--in remaining
landmarks, or lovemarks, when all else is changed:
"The cedars wave on Lebanon,
But Judah's statelier maids are gone."
4. Its root is thus a form of fate to the tree. It condemns, or indulges
it, in its place. These semi-living creatures, come what may, shall abide,
happy, or tormented. No doubt concerning "the position in which Providence
has placed _them_" is to trouble their minds, except so far as they can
mend it by seeking light, or shrinking from wind, or grasping at support,
within certain limits. In the thoughts of men they have thus become twofold
images,--on the one side, of spirits restrained and half destroyed, whence
the fables of transformation into trees; on the other, of spirits patient
and continuing, having root in themselves and in good ground, capable of
all persistent {29} effort and vital stability, both in themselves, and for
the human States they form.
5. In this function of holding fast, roots have a power of grasp quite
different from that of branches. It is not a grasp, or clutch by
contraction, as that of a bird's claw, or of the small branches we call
'tendrils' in climbing plants. It is a dead, clumsy, but inevitable grasp,
by swelling, _after_ contortion. For there is this main difference between
a branch and root, that a branch cannot grow vividly but in certain
directions and relations to its neighbour branches; but a root can grow
wherever there is earth, and can turn in any direction to avoid an
obstacle.[14]
6. In thus contriving access for itself where it chooses, a root contorts
itself into more serpent-like writhing than branches can; and when it has
once coiled partly round a rock, or stone, it grasps it tight, necessarily,
merely by swelling. Now a root has force enough sometimes to split rocks,
but not to crush them; so it is compelled to grasp by _flattening_ as it
thickens; and, as it must have room somewhere, it alters its own shape as
if it were made of {30} dough, and holds the rock, not in a claw, but in a
wooden cast or mould, adhering to its surface. And thus it not only finds
its anchorage in the rock, but binds the rocks of its anchorage with a
constrictor cable.
7. Hence--and this is a most important secondary function--roots bind
together the ragged edges of rocks as a hem does the torn edge of a dress:
they literally stitch the stones together; so that, while it is always
dangerous to pass under a treeless edge of overhanging crag, as soon as it
has become beautiful with trees, it is safe also. The rending power of
roots on rocks has been greatly overrated. Capillary attraction in a willow
wand will indeed split granite, and swelling roots sometimes heave
considerable masses aside, but on the whole, roots, small and great, bind,
and do not rend.[15] The surfaces of mountains are dissolved and
disordered, by rain, and frost, and chemical decomposition, into mere heaps
of loose stones on their desolate summits; but, where the forests grow,
soil accumulates and disintegration ceases. And by cutting down forests on
great mountain slopes, not only is the climate destroyed, but the danger of
superficial landslip fearfully increased.
8. The second function of roots is to gather for the plant the nourishment
it needs from the ground. This is {31} partly water, mixed with some kinds
of air (ammonia, etc.,) but the plant can get both water and ammonia from
the atmosphere; and, I believe, for the most part does so; though, when it
cannot get water from the air, it will gladly drink by its roots. But the
things it cannot receive from the air at all are certain earthy salts,
essential to it (as iron is essential in our own blood), and of which when
it has quite exhausted the earth, no more such plants can grow in that
ground. On this subject you will find enough in any modern treatise on
agriculture; all that I want you to note here is that this feeding function
of the root is of a very delicate and discriminating kind, needing much
searching and mining among the dust, to find what it wants. If it only
wanted water, it could get most of that by spreading in mere soft senseless
limbs, like sponge, as far, and as far down, as it could--but to get the
_salt_ out of the earth it has to _sift_ all the earth, and taste and touch
every grain of it that it can, with fine fibres. And therefore a root is
not at all a merely passive sponge or absorbing thing, but an infinitely
subtle tongue, or tasting and eating thing. That is why it is always so
fibrous and divided and entangled in the clinging earth.
9. "Always fibrous and divided"? But many roots are quite hard and solid!
No; the active part of the root is always, I believe, a fibre. But there is
often a provident and passive part--a savings bank of root--in which
nourishment is laid up for the plant, and which, though it may be
underground, is no {32} more to be considered its real root than the kernel
of a seed is. When you sow a pea, if you take it up in a day or two, you
will find the fibre below, which is root; the shoot above, which is plant;
and the pea as a now partly exhausted storehouse, looking very woful, and
like the granaries of Paris after the fire. So, the round solid root of a
cyclamen, or the conical one which you know so well as a carrot, are not
properly roots, but permanent storehouses,--only the fibres that grow from
them are roots. Then there are other apparent roots which are not even
storehouses, but refuges; houses where the little plant lives in its
infancy, through winter and rough weather. So that it will be best for you
at once to limit your idea of a root to this,--that it is a group of
growing fibres which taste and suck what is good for the plant out of the
ground, and by their united strength hold it in its place; only remember
the thick limbs of roots do not feed, but only the fine fibres at the ends
of them which are something between tongues and sponges, and while they
absorb moisture readily, are yet as particular about getting what they
think nice to eat as any dainty little boy or girl; looking for it
everywhere, and turning angry and sulky if they don't get it.
10. But the root has, it seems to me, one more function, the most important
of all. I say, it seems to me, for observe, what I have hitherto told you
is all (I believe) ascertained and admitted; this that I am going to tell
you has not yet, as far as I know, been asserted by men of {33} science,
though I believe it to be demonstrable. But you are to examine into it, and
think of it for yourself.
There are some plants which appear to derive all their food from the
air--which need nothing but a slight grasp of the ground to fix them in
their place. Yet if we were to tie them into that place, in a framework,
and cut them from their roots, they would die. Not only in these, but in
all other plants, the vital power by which they shape and feed themselves,
whatever that power may be, depends, I think, on that slight touch of the
earth, and strange inheritance of its power. It is as essential to the
plant's life as the connection of the head of an animal with its body by
the spine is to the animal. Divide the feeble nervous thread, and all life
ceases. Nay, in the tree the root is even of greater importance. You will
not kill the tree, as you would an animal, by dividing its body or trunk.
The part not severed from the root will shoot again. But in the root, and
its touch of the ground, is the life of it. My own definition of a plant
would be "a living creature whose source of vital energy is in the earth"
(or in the water, as a form of the earth; that is, in inorganic substance).
There is, however, one tribe of plants which seems nearly excepted from
this law. It is a very strange one, having long been noted for the
resemblance of its flowers to different insects; and it has recently been
proved by Mr. Darwin to be dependent on insects for its existence. Doubly
strange therefore, it seems, that in some cases this race of plants all but
reaches the independent life of {34} insects. It rather _settles_ upon
boughs than roots itself in them; half of its roots may wave in the air.
11. What vital power is, men of science are not a step nearer knowing than
they were four thousand years ago. They are, if anything, farther from
knowing now than then, in that they imagine themselves nearer. But they
know more about its limitations and manifestations than they did. They have
even arrived at something like a proof that there is a fixed quantity of it
flowing out of things and into them. But, for the present, rest content
with the general and sure knowledge that, fixed or flowing, measurable or
immeasurable--one with electricity or heat or light, or quite distinct from
any of them--life is a delightful, and its negative, death, a dreadful
thing, to human creatures; and that you can give or gather a certain
quantity of life into plants, animals, and yourself by wisdom and courage,
and by their reverses can bring upon them any quantity of death you please,
which is a much more serious point for you to consider than what life and
death are.
12. Now, having got a quite clear idea of a root properly so called, we may
observe what those storehouses, refuges, and ruins are, which we find
connected with roots. The greater number of plants feed and grow at the
same time; but there are some of them which like to feed first and grow
afterwards. For the first year, or, at all events, the first period of
their life, they gather material for their future life out of the ground
and out {35} of the air, and lay it up in a storehouse as bees make combs.
Of these stores--for the most part rounded masses tapering downwards into
the ground--some are as good for human beings as honeycombs are; only not
so sweet. We steal them from the plants, as we do from the bees, and these
conical upside-down hives or treasuries of Atreus, under the names of
carrots, turnips, and radishes, have had important influence on human
fortunes. If we do not steal the store, next year the plant lives upon it,
raises its stem, flowers and seeds out of that abundance, and having
fulfilled its destiny, and provided for its successor, passes away, root
and branch together.
13. There is a pretty example of patience for us in this; and it would be
well for young people generally to set themselves to grow in a carrotty or
turnippy manner, and lay up secret store, not caring to exhibit it until
the time comes for fruitful display. But they must not, in after-life,
imitate the spendthrift vegetable, and blossom only in the strength of what
they learned long ago; else they soon come to contemptible end. Wise people
live like laurels and cedars, and go on mining in the earth, while they
adorn and embalm the air.
14. Secondly, Refuges. As flowers growing on trees have to live for some
time, when they are young in their buds, so some flowers growing on the
ground have to live for a while, when they are young, _in_ what we call
their {36} roots. These are mostly among the Drosidæ[16] and other humble
tribes, loving the ground; and, in their babyhood, liking to live quite
down in it. A baby crocus has literally its own little dome--domus, or
duomo--within which in early spring it lives a delicate convent life of its
own, quite free from all worldly care and dangers, exceedingly ignorant of
things in general, but itself brightly golden and perfectly formed before
it is brought out. These subterranean palaces and vaulted cloisters, which
we call bulbs, are no more roots than the blade of grass is a root, in
which the ear of corn forms before it shoots up.
15. Thirdly, Ruins. The flowers which have these subterranean homes form
one of many families whose roots, as well as seeds, have the power of
reproduction. The succession of some plants is trusted much to their seeds:
a thistle sows itself by its down, an oak by its acorns; the companies of
flying emigrants settle where they may; and the shadowy tree is content to
cast down its showers of nuts for swines' food with the chance that here
and there one may become a ship's bulwark. But others among plants are less
careless, or less proud. Many are anxious for their children to grow in the
place where they grew themselves, and secure this not merely by letting
their fruit fall at their feet, on the chance of its growing up {37} beside
them, but by closer bond, bud springing forth from root, and the young
plant being animated by the gradually surrendered life of its parent.
Sometimes the young root is formed above the old one, as in the crocus, or
beside it, as in the amaryllis, or beside it in a spiral succession, as in
the orchis; in these cases the old root always perishes wholly when the
young one is formed; but in a far greater number of tribes, one root
connects itself with another by a short piece of intermediate stem; and
this stem does not at once perish when the new root is formed, but grows on
at one end indefinitely, perishing slowly at the other, the scars or ruins
of the past plants being long traceable on its sides. When it grows
entirely underground it is called a root-stock. But there is no essential
distinction between a root-stock and a creeping stem, only the root-stock
may be thought of as a stem which shares the melancholy humour of a root in
loving darkness, while yet it has enough consciousness of better things to
grow towards, or near, the light. In one family it is even fragrant where
the flower is not, and a simple houseleek is called 'rhodiola rosea,'
because its root-stock has the scent of a rose.
16. There is one very unusual condition of the root-stock which has become
of much importance in economy, though it is of little in botany; the
forming, namely, of knots at the ends of the branches of the underground
stem, where the new roots are to be thrown out. Of these knots, or
'tubers,' (swollen things,) one kind, belonging to {38} the tobacco tribe,
has been singularly harmful, together with its pungent relative, to a
neighbouring country of ours, which perhaps may reach a higher destiny than
any of its friends can conceive for it, if it can ever succeed in living
without either the potato, or the pipe.
17. Being prepared now to find among plants many things which are like
roots, yet are not; you may simplify and make fast your true idea of a root
as a fibre or group of fibres, which fixes, animates, and partly feeds the
leaf. Then practically, as you examine plants in detail, ask first
respecting them: What kind of root have they? Is it large or small in
proportion to their bulk, and why is it so? What soil does it like, and
what properties does it acquire from it? The endeavour to answer these
questions will soon lead you to a rational inquiry into the plant's
history. You will first ascertain what rock or earth it delights in, and
what climate and circumstances; then you will see how its root is fitted to
sustain it mechanically under given pressures and violences, and to find
for it the necessary sustenance under given difficulties of famine or
drought. Lastly you will consider what chemical actions appear to be going
on in the root, or its store; what processes there are, and elements, which
give pungency to the radish, flavour to the onion, or sweetness to the
liquorice; and of what service each root may be made capable under
cultivation, and by proper subsequent treatment, either to animals or men.
18. I shall not attempt to do any of this for you; I {39} assume, in giving
this advice, that you wish to pursue the science of botany as your chief
study; I have only broken moments for it, snatched from my chief
occupations, and I have done nothing myself of all this I tell you to do.
But so far as you can work in this manner, even if you only ascertain the
history of one plant, so that you know that accurately, you will have
helped to lay the foundation of a true science of botany, from which the
mass of useless nomenclature,[17] now mistaken for science, will fall away,
as the husk of a poppy falls from the bursting flower.
* * * * *
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