The Chanute times. [volume] (Chanute, Kan.) 1897-1913, 1897-10-22

through the ice and form a border OF
blue blossoms on the edge OF the snow
sheet.
This adventurous little plant does not
wait for the melting of the snow, but,
vastly daring, begins to grow under the
surface of the ice shetland melts way
up for itself by internal heat, like
vegetable furnace. 1t may fairly be
called slow combustion stove, not ng-
uratiyely, but literally. 1t burns itself
up in order to melt the ice above 1t.
This wonderful plant opens it's fringed
and pensile blue blossoms in the very
midst of the snow, often showing It's
slender head above thin layer OF Ice
where it fearlessly displays its two SIS
ter bells among the frozen sheet whlch
still surrounds it's stem in the most In
creditable fashion.
Comparatively few observers nave
noticed that the soldanella, fragile as
it is, actually forces itself up through
solid coat of ice, not exactly by heWlnS
its way, but by melting path for It.
self in the crystal sheet above 1t. yet
such Is really the case, warns the Ice as
1t goes. The bud begins to grow on the
frozen soil before the ground Is pare
under the hardened and compressed
snow which at its edge is always Ice
like in texture. They then bore their
way I'D by internal heat (like that OF
an animaD through the sheet that COW
ers them; and they often expand their
delicate blue or white blossoms, with
the scalloped edges, in sup-shaped
hollow above, while sheet OF re-lrozen
ice. through which they have warmed
a tunnel or canal for themselves, still
surrounds their stems and hides their
roots and their flattened foliage. Thls
is so strange a miracle of nature that
it demands some explanation; the
method by which the soldanella obtains
its results is no less marvellous than
the results themselves which 1t pro-
duces.
The canny plant lays its plans deep,
and begins we'll beforehand. 1T mas
made preparations. All the previous
summer it has been spreading its round
leaves to the mountain sun, and laying
by II aterial for next years towering
season. Leaves are the mouths ana
stomachs of plants, and the soldanella
has q STYLE of leaves admirably adapted
to its peculiar purposes. Expanded in
the sunlight, they eat carbon and ny
drogen all summer, and by the time
winter comes they are thick and leath-
cry. filled with fuel for the spring, and,
of course, evergreen. Inc material
thus laid by consists of starch, proto-
plasm. and other rich foodstuffs. All
winter the plant is hidden under the
snow and ice, but as soon as the spring
sun begins to melt the surface at the
lower edge of the sheets water trickles
down through cracks in the ice, ana
sets the root-stock budding. 1t produces
the very same effect as the water that
is poured upon melting barley in order
to make it terminate. And the same
result follows. The soldanella absorbs
oxygen from the air below the snow,
evolves heat from their combination,
and combines with it the fuels in its
own substance, through the icy sheets
that spread above 1t.
The warmth the plant obtains by
this curious process of slow internal
combustion it first employs to melt a
little round hole in the ice for its
arched fower-buds. At the beginning
the hollow which is found above each |
pair of buds is dome-shaped; the stem |
pushes it's way up through dome of
air inclosed in the ice; and the water
it liberates trickles down to the root,
thus helping to supply moisture for