The Russellville Democrat., 1892-04-21
HOW PLANTS TRAVEL


 HOW PLANTS TRAVEL.
 There are few more interesting studies connected with wild flowers than the geography of plants. Plants are essentially travellers. Not even the most steadily dis posed remains perpetually in one place. The bulb produces bulblet at its side, beneath or above it, and then dies, leaving vacant the spot which it occupied. Some times the plant travels faster by offsets, or runners, and is still wider dis tributed by buds or seeds. It is only a question of time for the slow est plants to advance to immediate distances, and we may reasonably conclude that no species of plant has been always in the location where we now find it. There is, of course, retrogression as well as an advance, and the same ground may have been occupied and re-occupied number of times. It is just possible that a species abundant in any one location may always have been there from its first appearance on the earth, but bearing in mind the known essen tial character of plant to travel we may reasonably believe the prob abilities to be against that conclu- sion, and hence the effort to trace the plant to its original home is clothed with peculiar interest There are many agencies by which plants travel independently of those which are parts of their own natures. Animals carry both the plants themselves and their seeds, and the winds and waters are ever at work on the task of distribution. Rivers especially have very inn portant part, and the plant geographer generally finds the range of a species much greater in the line of stream than in lateral directions.
 As to where any one species first made its appearance nothing has yet been discovered. There is reason to believe that they did not appear simultaneousiy-some are certainly more recent than others but though new species are continually being dis covered, no one has yet been found that could be pronounced modern creation in the sense the average mind would understand by modern times. But though this field of study seems hopelessly impenetrable, the earnest student is often furnished with glimpses of the interior, and which keep him in hopes of better reward some day. One of these welcome aids in these interesting researches is the LepacbyS Colimnd,'is. It was first discovered by Bradbury or Nuttall, most probably the form CT, in the lower portion of what was once the great Missouri territory, and which embraced at one time nearly all the land we now possess between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, but since that time 1t has been found by almost every government expedition along the lines of most of the streams ex amined. Thus one reports it as found on ''the Upper Canadian j" another prairies along the Canadian {; another in the Upper Arkansas, !" and as we proceed along almost every river that runs into the Missouri up to its very source the Lepachys is found. And it exists on the high prairie ridge which di- vided the waters of the south from those flowing north, and the plant follows the Saskatchewan in its northeast course towards the Hudson Bay. A plant which had its ancient home in warm climate would be able to resist but very little cold, and its northward travels be limited by the winter temperature. It is, therefore, probable that the Lepa- chys sprang first into life in the up per Missouri region, and then spread north aud south through the river agencies chiefly, and once established in the new localities, spread east and west, meeting each colony from side to side.-Meehan's Monthly.