Personality of plants

PERSONALITY OF PLANTS
ted its seed over every island in the group.
From a delicate, hand-manicured, potted plant
of the greenhouse, it shot up into a tough, and
belligerent swashbuckler a fathom tall, that
marched in serried ranks over the landscape,
crushing beneath it and choking to death all
the sweet native grasses, shrubs and flowers.
In the lower forests, it became jungle, in the
open, it became jungle only more so. It was
practically impenetrable to man. The cattlemen
wailed and vainly fought with it. It grew
faster and spread faster than they could grub it
out."
Then ensued a battle royal between man and
plant. The man called to his aid hosts of in-
sect mercenaries. "Some of these predacious
enemies of the Lantana ate and sucked and
sapped. Others made incubators out of the
stems, tunnelled and undermined the flower-
clusters, hatched maggots in the hearts of the
seeds, or covered the leaves with suffocating
fungoid growths. Thus simultaneously at-
tacked in front and rear and flank, above and
below, inside and out, the all-conquering swash-
buckler recoiled. Today, the battle is almost
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