The Caldwell tribune. [volume] (Caldwell, Idaho Territory [Idaho]) 1883-1928, 1897-12-11

IL a
through the ice and form 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 sheet, and melts way
up for itself by internal heat, like
vegetable furnace. 1t may fairly be
called a slow combustion stove, not t1g-
uratively but literally. 1t burns itself
up in order to melt the ice above II.
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 a thin layer OF ice
where it fearlessly displays its two SIS
ter bells among the frozen sheet which
still surrounds it's stem in the most in
creditable fashion.
Comparatively few observers havs
noticed that the soldanella, fragile as
1t is, actually forces itself up through
solid coat of ice, not exactly by hewing
it's way, but by melting path for IT.
self in the crystal sheet above it. 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 bare
under the hardened and compressed
snow which at It's edge is always ice
like in texture. They then bore their
way up by internal heat Qike 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 a sup-shaped
hollow above, while sheet of re-frozen
ice, through which they have warmed
a tunnel or canal for themselves, still
surrounds their stems and hides their
roots and their flattened foliage. This
is so strange miracle of nature that
it demands some explanation; the
method by which the soldanella obtains
it's results is no less marvellous than
the results themselves which it pro-
duces.
The canny plant lays it's plans deep,
and begins we'll beforehand. It has
made preparations. All the previous
summer it has been spreading its round
leaves to the mountain sun, and laying
by hterial for next years Towering
season. Leaves are the mouths and
stomachs of plants, and the soldanella
has a style of leaves admirably adapted
to its peculiar purposes. Expanded in
the sunlight, they eat carbon and h%-
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. The 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, fnA
sets the root-stock budding. II produces
the very same effect as the water ttlIt
is poured upon melting barley in OF der
to make it terminate. And the same.
result follows. The soldanella abstpbs
oxygen from the air below the sECw,
evolves heat from their combination,
and combines with it the fuels in its
own substance, through the icy shsets
that spread above it.
The warmth the plant obtains by
this curious process of slow internal
combustion it first employs to melt
little round hole in the ice for it's
arched flower-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 a dome of
air inclosed in the ice; and the water
it liberates trickles down to the root,
thus helping to supply moisture for
a MhaE ~