Ch. 5: Hook and Root Climbers - Page 2

also observed in a plant of Marcgravia dubia in my hothouse. Root-climbers, as far as I have seen, namely, the Ivy (Hedera helix), Ficus repens, and F. barbatus, have no power of movement, not even from the light to the dark. As previously stated, the Hoya carnosa (Asclepiadaceae) is a spiral twiner, and likewise adheres by rootlets even to a flat wall. The tendril-bearing Bignonia Tweedyana emits roots, which curve half round and adhere to thin sticks. The Tecoma radicans (Bignoniaceae), which is closely allied to many spontaneously revolving species, climbs by rootlets; nevertheless, its young shoots apparently move about more than can be accounted for by the varying action of the light.

I have not closely observed many root-climbers, but can give one curious fact. Ficus repens climbs up a wall just like Ivy; and when the young rootlets are made to press lightly on slips of glass, they emit after about a week's interval, as I observed several times, minute drops of clear fluid, not in the least milky like that exuded from a wound. This fluid is slightly viscid, but cannot be drawn out into threads. It has the remarkable property of not soon drying; a drop, about the size of half a pin's head, was slightly spread out on glass, and I scattered on it some minute grains of sand. The glass was left exposed in a drawer during hot and dry weather, and if the fluid had been water, it would certainly have dried in a few minutes; but it remained fluid, closely surrounding each grain of sand, during 128 days: how much longer it would have remained I cannot say. Some other rootlets were left in contact with the glass for about ten days or a fortnight, and the drops of secreted fluid were now rather larger, and so viscid that they could be drawn out into threads. Some other rootlets were left in contact during twenty-three days, and these were firmly cemented to the glass. Hence we may conclude that the rootlets first secrete a slightly viscid fluid, subsequently absorb the watery parts, (for we have seen that the fluid will not dry by itself,) and ultimately leave a cement. When the rootlets were torn from the glass, atoms of yellowish matter were left on it, which were partly dissolved by a drop of bisulphide of carbon; and this extremely volatile fluid was rendered very much less volatile by what it had dissolved.

As the bisulphide of carbon has a strong power of softening indurated caoutchouc, I soaked in it during a short time several rootlets of a plant which had grown up a plaistered wall; and I then found many extremely thin threads of transparent, not viscid, excessively elastic matter, precisely like caoutchouc, attached to two sets of rootlets on the same branch. These threads proceeded from the bark of the rootlet at one end, and at the other end were firmly attached to particles of silex or mortar from the wall. There could be no mistake in this observation, as I played with the threads for a long time under the microscope,