Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/258

254 to act as organs of great activity in the vegetative work of the plant. Through them carbon dioxide and oxygen are taken in from the air and united, in the green cells, with water and nitrogenous matter absorbed from the soil by the root hairs. The carbon dioxide and water unite to form carbohydrates such a starch and sugar, and oxygen which is given off as a waste product. The carbohydrates and other food products, proteids manufactured in the leaves, are transported to regions of growth, such as buds, or places of storage, like underground stems. Before being transported to growing points, the insoluble products are digested or changed to soluble forms, starch being changed to sugar and then transformed into various plant tissues. If carried to storage regions they are first converted back into insoluble forms,

such as starch, and then stored up to supply energy for the rapid development of the next spring.

Picking the flowers of the bloodroot destroys the only possible chance of those particular flowers producing seed which may be able to survive and reproduce their kind. Destroying the leaves or the rootstock interferes with subsequent growth of the plant.

Herbaceous perennials, that is soft-stemmed plants which live on and produce flowers season after season, die down to the ground each fall and in the spring send forth shoots from the buds which are just under the surface. Those which blossom earliest have the largest