Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1891-12-11
EATERS OF CARBON.
Trees and Plants Grow Out Of the
Air, not from the Ground.
COrnhill Magazine.

torHnliI hdsdZihe.
Take an ordinary seltzer wascr ST.
phon and empty it until only few
drops remain in the bottom. Then the
bottle is full of gas, and that gas,
which will rush out with a squirt
when you press the knob, is the stuff
that plants eat-raw material of life,
both animal and vegetable.
That, in its ideally simply form, is
the Had in nutshell, the core and
iornal of biology. The whole cycle OF
life is one eternal seesaw. First the
plant collects its carbon compounds
from the air in the oxidized state; it
deoxidizes and rebuilds them, and
then the animal proceeds to burn
them by slow combustion within its
own body and to turn them loose
upon the air once more oxidized.
After which the plant starts again on
the same road as before, and the ami
NAL also recommences da capo. And
so on al infinitum.
But the point which l want par
ticularly to emphasize here is just
this: That trees and plants don't
grow out of the ground at all, as most
people do vainly talk, but directly out
of the air, and that when they die or
get consumed they return once more
to the atmosphere from which they
were taken. Trees undeniably eat
carbon.
Of course, therefore, all the ordinary
unscientific conceptions of how plants
feed are absolutely erroneous. Vege-
table physiology indeed got beyond
those conceptions a good hundred
years ago. But it usually takes a
hundred years for the world at large
to make up it's leeway. Trees don't
suck up their nutriment by the roots,
they don't derive their food from the
soil. they don't need to be fed like
babies through tube with terrestrial
solids. The solitary instance of an
orchid hung up by string in a con-
servatory on a piece of bark ought to
be sufficient at once to dispel forever
this stranger delusion-if people ever
thought; but, of course, they don't
think-I mean other people
The true mouths and stomachs of
plants are not to be found in the roots,
but in the green leaves; their true
food is not sucked up from the soil
but it is inhaled through tiny chan
nels from the air; the mass of their
material is carbon, as we can all see
visibly to the naked eye when log of
wood is reduced to charcoal, and that
carbon the leaves themselves drink in
by a thousand small green mouths
from the atmosphere around them.
But how about the juice, the sap,
the qualities of the soil, the manure
required? is the incredulous reply of
other people. What is the use of the
roots and especially of the rootlets, if
they are not mouths and supply tubes
of the plants? Well, l plainly per-
ceive l can get no forrader," like the
farmer with his claret, till I've
answered that question. Professionally
at least; so will say here at once,
without further ado, that the plant re-
quires drink rs we'll as food, and the
roots are the mouths that supply it
with water.
They also suck up few other
things as we'll, which are necessary in
deed, but far from forming the bulk of
nutriment. Many plants, however,
don't need any roots at all, while none
can get on without leaves as mouths
and stomachs-that is to say, no true
plant-like plants, for some parasite
plants are practically to all intents
and purposes animals. To put it
briefly, every plant has one set of
aerial mouths to suck carbon, and
many plants have another set of sub
terranean mouths as we'll, to suck I'D
water and mineral constituents.