. The natural history of the farm : a guide to the practical study of the sources of our living in wild nature . Natural history. THE BRAMBLES OF THE FARM 297 Our most typical bramble is the wild blackberry. Its stout, thorny biennial canes shoot up to full height one year, and bloom and fruit and die the next. Year by year, the dead canes, commingled with the living, accum- mulate in the bramble patch, making it more and more impenetrable. They gather to themselves as they settle to the earth, an abundance of falling leaves, and fill up the center of the thicket with a rich mulch that keeps t
. The natural history of the farm : a guide to the practical study of the sources of our living in wild nature . Natural history. THE BRAMBLES OF THE FARM 297 Our most typical bramble is the wild blackberry. Its stout, thorny biennial canes shoot up to full height one year, and bloom and fruit and die the next. Year by year, the dead canes, commingled with the living, accum- mulate in the bramble patch, making it more and more impenetrable. They gather to themselves as they settle to the earth, an abundance of falling leaves, and fill up the center of the thicket with a rich mulch that keeps the ground moist, and favors the growth of the tallest canes and the finest berries. There is no chance for grass to grow in the midst of such a thicket, but only about its borders. The wild red raspberry makes thickets that are less thorny and less dense, but that are hard to penetrate because the long overarching canes, fastened to the earth at both ends, trip one up badly. The red canes, covered with whitish bloom and bearing handsome and gracefully poised leaves, are very beautiful. This bramble loves the shelter of a brush pile or fallen tree. Its extremely long reach and its habit of striking root wherever a tip meets the ground, enable it to shift its location, moving one stride each season. It often springs from seed on the top of some rotting log or Fig. 127. Wild blackberry: A young shoot of the season fruiting shoot, and a dead Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Needham, James G. (James George), 1868-1956. New York : Comstock Pub. Co
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectnaturalhistory, booky
