Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/259

Rh underground storehouses. The Solomon's seal, ginseng, anemone, violet, bellwort, irillium and iris liavo underground rootstocks which provide energy for rapid development in the spring. The adder's tongue and other lilies, the claytonia or spring beauty, and the jackin -the-pulpit have bulbs or corms deep down in the ground which serve as storehouses for plant food. They send up in the spring a few comparatively large leaves and a single scape of flowers which can be picked without doing much damage to the plant itself. The jack-in-the -pulpit, however, grows in moist soil and is easily uprooted. The mayflower (epigæa), and the twin-flower (linnæa) both have slender, rather woody creeping rootstocks which are frequently torn up when the blossoms are broken off rather than cut off.

The late blooming perennials suffer less by picking than those plants which blossom earlier, for their vegetative work for the season is nearly completed when they become attractive and subject to injury. The woody perennials, shrubs and trees, form buds in the axils of their leaves and at tips of branches. The buds increase in size during the summer and the next spring become swollen as the sap from the stem rises in them. Then they burst open and develop into new branches bearing leaves and flowers. If the twigs are broken off the growth of several years and also the buds, promises of new branches, are destroyed. The rhododendron, magnolia, mountain laurel, flowering dogwood and other attractive early blooming shrubs suffer in this way. The gathering of mountain laurel for winter decorations destroys quantities of buds which would have developed into beautiful clusters of blossoms in the early summer. Careful cutting or pruning of a shrub or tree is nevertheless advantageous to it, checking an over exertion on the part of the plant, which is necessary to flower production, and thereby strengthening the parts which remain.

Annuals are herbaceous plants which live but one year, dying after the maturing of the seed. Their only means of perpetuating their race is through the production of seed. Wholesale plucking of their blossoms will, therefore, lead to their extermination. The fringed gentian, and the pink sabbatia are among these plants. They are very difficult to transplant and local in distribution. The painted cup, known in the west by the better name of painter's brush, is also an annual, and exhibits a sign of weakness in parasiticism of its roots. These plants call for special protection. Careful cutting of few blossoms from the portions of a plant where they are thickest is often a benefit to the flowers which remain, giving them additional energy for the production of fruit which is more exhausting to the plant than production of flowers.