Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-10-09
Scientific Discussions
by Garrett P. Serviss

Here is the romance OF nuchie-
berry plant, thousand years old and
eight acres big.
Besides its age and size. this remark
able plant has for special attraction
the fact that it is the largest of the only
two specimens of it's species-the wild
box huckleberry-now known to be in
existence.
This 1 state on the authority of Fred
erick V. Coville, the botanist, who AYERS
that the least that American natural
lists can do for this charming little
thousand-year-o lady of the forest"
in return for what she has done for
them, is to try to keep her living for
ever. Her home is on the westward
slope of a timbered hill in Perry
County. Pennsylvania.
a thousand years seems to be an
underestimate of the real age of this
horizon seeking plant whose pleasure is
found not in towering each century a
little nearer the sky, like the giant
Sequoia, but in hugging close to the
soil, and stretching farther and farther
toward the receding and deceptive edges
of the world.
Mr.. Covlle estimates that not less
than 1900 years must have elapsed
since the baby plant began to expand
from its cradle-point like a wave on
water. Give it time enough, and take
away obstacles, and this wonderful in
dividual might be pictured as embrace
ing the continent. Its light blue ber-
ries are as bright and its dark green
leaves as relucent at the circumference
as at the center.
Age doth not wither 1t, nor distance
weary its unendlng youth. At every
step it renews it's strength. 1t gives
birth to no seedlings. After the most
painstaking search. Mr.. Covlle found
not one. Its environment invites it to
perpetuate its kind in the ordinary way,
but its individual nature forbids. 1t
would rather fill the world with it's
own personal self than with its Off
spring. 1t produces seeds, but they are
sterile, or at best of exceedingly feeble
terminating power. and it does not
respond to self-pollination.
We find complications Of the prin-
ciple of this all-grasping, self-centered
life in the social, political, and indus
trial worlds Examples will occur to
everybody. Carried to the extreme the
principle would cover a planet with a
single inhabitant, a Briareus. whose
arms would reach round the globe and
come back to loop up with their own
shoulders. In this view that creeping
little old lady of the forest" induces
shudder, for monstrosity is a quality
not of multitude but of oversize
If that same eight-acre patch were
covered by thousands of intermingled
huckleberry plants. each having it's own
independent rootstock, there would be
no suggestion of uncanniness, but when
you find that it is all one single plant
Nrnt n,-1
and a tingle of the nerves, behind which
even kind of fear may lurk.
The orator can face without treplda-
tion thousand pairs of eyes, for he
knows that their power does not sur
pass that of the strongest individual
brain behind them; but put all those
eyes into single gigantic head-and
then!
Notwithstanding the facts that this
strange huckleberry plant in Pennsyl-
vania produces no offspring and that,
with single exception, it is the only
wild plant of its kind that has been
found now living, efforts are being
made, with some promise of success,
to perpetuate the species by cross-fer-
tillzation.
For this purpose Mr.. Covllle has
hunted up the other of the two living
wild box huckleberry plants and has
found it, or rediscovered it, near Candy.
Delaware. Its existence had long be-
fore been known, but afterward it's
precise location was forgotten 1t re-
quired considerable detective skill, based
upon special scientific knowledge - a
hunt something like that of skilful
prospector for lost mine-to run down
the plant. When found it proved to be
relatively small, covering an area only
twenty feet square.
Like its greater sister 1t lives to
itself alone, producing no seedlings.
But by cross-pollination of the flowers
of the two plants they now have off,
spring in Washington. which may in
definitely perpetuate the race.
Only five localities have ever been
known in which this plant grew, and.
as already said, but two of these re-
main. Mr.. Coville thinks that the
species was killed by some fungus or
insect, and that the two existing plants
have grown from chance seeds scat
tered by birds. At least seventy-three
years ago Spencer F. Baird discovered
the old lady in Pennsylvania, and
thrilled Asa Gray with an account of
the plant. But 1t does not appear
that he suspected that it was a single
individual