Evening star., 1940-12-10
Of Stors, Men
And Atoms
Notebook Of Science Progress
In Field, Laboratory
And Study
Bu Thomas r. Henru.

By Thomas r. Henry.
Medicine is turning to the plants, some
of which seem virtually to have solved
the secret of immortality, for hints on
how to prolong life and vigor in man.
The quest was explained the other day
by DR.. William Crocker, botanist of the
Boyce Thompson Institute of Plant Re-
search at Yonkers N. Y, member Of
the United States Public Health Service
Committee on the Problems of Old Age.
There is large group of plants, Dr.
Crocker said, which fruit once and die.
These include most of the annual garden
plants and many of the biennials. A
cabbage, he pointed out, is good exam
pie. 1t produces head one year and
blossoms the next-and then nothing
can save it.
Man and most other animals seem to
fall in the class of the cabbage. Why
must it die, the Psychologists wonder
Actually, DR.. Crocker explained, cabbages
have been kept alive for several years
by preventing them from fruiting by
various technical methods.
1t may be, DR.. Crocker said, that the
fatal aging process which sets in is due
to some internal poison developed by the
plant itself or it may be due to some
deficiency in the diet. If this can be
determined experimentally. it may throw
some light on the cause of aging in
organisms in general, including human
beings and laboratory rats.
Another class of plants, including most
Of the trees, DR.. CrOcker said, have come
close to attaining immortality on earth.
They fruit repeatedly, year after year
and yet seem to grow no older. He cited
the famous tree of Tula" in Mexico, a
old and the most ancient of all living
things.
Another example is that Of the Lom-
hardy poplar. 1t comes from sport"
which originated in Italy about 400 years
ago. 1t bears no fertile seeds and can
be propagated only by slipping" This
is quite different process, DR.. Crocker
said, from growth from seed, since there
is no renewal of life in a new generation.
The roofing slip is part of the same life
which goes on without interruption. All
the Lombardy poplars in the world might
be considered as part of a single immor-
tai tree. Yet, in four centuries, he
pointed out. there apparently has been
no decrease in vigor, especially when the
trees are protected from disease. The
same is true of willows. The humble
potato. DR.. Crocker says, seems to have
gone part of the way toward solving the
same problem with a different line of
attack, although there is evidence that
potato lines seem to run out after a
few generations.
What have the tree of Tula and the
Lombardy poplar got he asks, which man
and the cabbage have missed?
The Public Health Service Committee,
consisting Of some of the countrys fore
most scientists, does not expect to get an
elixir of eternal life for man out Of trees,
they emphasize. There is vast differ
ence between plant and any kind Of
animal. The former is stationary, its
food comes to it, it doesn't worry about
anything and, consequently, doesn't burn
itself up. But neither, for that matter,
does a cabbage. Back in the beginning
Of life, perhaps more than $500 900 900
years ago, plants and animals presumably
branched of from a common ancestry
and in some of the lower forms it still
is dhficult to tell them apart. The diff
ference in longevity and retention of
youth must be due to something more
fundamental than degree of activity.
Aging, it was pointed out at the COM
mittee meetings, hitherto has been con-
than a physical-chemical process which
might be slowed down or speeded up if
there was any hint as to what was re-
sponsible for it. If the psychologists
could find what happens in the cabbage
that does not happen in the cypress, they
would have their first hint of what takes
place behind the face of the clock of time
the Boyce Thompson Institute, DR..
Crocker said, is in the study of the
longevity of seeds, which are plants in
embryo. Usually they Idle" after a few
years at the most and stories of wheat
grains found in the grave of King Tut,
which sprouted after 5000 years, were
characterized as pure fantasy. But by
various methods of drying in a vacuum,
properly sealing and keeping in low
temperature, Boyce Thompson Institute
scientists have been able to grow plants
from seeds years after their normal span
Of life. They have halted, or enormously
slowed down, the process of aging in
these lowly organisms without under
standing clearly why the methods worked.