uick or quack grass, or Bermuda, will extend in a year three to
five feet or more in one direction.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Rootstock of quick grass which has grown
through a potato, and in this way may be carried to another field
or another farm.]

June grass, quick grass, Bermuda grass, redtop, and white clover,
wherever opportunity offers, spread by means of jointed stems,
creeping and rooting at every joint on the surface of the ground or
a little way below. These are not roots at all, but true stems somewhat
in disguise. Here may also be mentioned, as having similar habit,
artichokes, peppermint, spearmint, barberry, Indian hemp, bindweed,
toadflax, matrimony vine, bugle-weed, ostrich fern, eagle fern,
sensitive fern, coltsfoot, St. John'swort, sorrel, great willow-herb,
and many more.

8. Runners establish new colonies.--The spreading of strawberries
by runners must be familiar to every observer. In 1894 a student
reported that a wild strawberry plant in the botanic garden had
produced in that year 1230 plants. Weeds were all kept away, the season
was favorable, the soil sandy; but on one side, within a foot and
a half, progress was checked by the presence of a large plant of
another kind. The multiplication of this plant by seeds, in addition
to that by runners, would have covered a still greater area of land.
Other plants with runners much like the strawberry are: several kinds
of crowfoot, barren strawberry, cinquefoil, strawberry geranium, and
orange hawkweed. Plants of the star cucumber, one-seeded cucumber,
grapes, morning-glories, and others, spread more or less over bushes
or over the ground, and are thus enabled to scatter seeds in every
direction.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--The runner of a strawberry plant.]

9. Branches lean over and root in the soil.--A black raspberry grows
fast in the ground and has to stay in one spot for life. It has neither
legs, feet, nor wings, and yet it can travel. The bush takes deep
root and spreads out its branches, which are sometimes ten feet or
more in length; the tips of these branches curve over to the ground
six feet away, and finally take root; from these roots new colonies
are formed, five to twenty in a year from one bush.

True, the old roots do not get far, and the new plants only get about
six feet in one season, but they have made some progress. This is
rather slow locomotion, you say; but let us look a little farther,
remembering that a seed is a little