23
"BY THEIR ROOTS YE SHALL KNOW THEM"
Wild plants are so commonly known to us as wild flowers
that the well-loved volumes we consult to refresh our
memories of them are invariably Flora. To find any
reference to roots is the exception rather than the rule.
Yet down in the basement is not only the mechanism which
does so much to ensure survival at all, but also the
structure which lends a great deal to the character of
the plant as we come to terms with it.
As recalled, my own earlier encounters with a matter of
such radical importance were whenever the weekend joint
happened to be sirloin of beef, and my father provided the
spade and fork needed to root up a fine rich yellow shaft
to be converted to horseradish sauce.
Some four decades later I found myself a member of a small
group engaged in the study of Cotswold grassland ecology,
and one hot August afternoon on a steep limestone down near
Cirencester, we each pursued our allotted tasks. After
casting a twelve-inch quadrat one hundred times in order
to record the capture of Stemless Thistles, I finished up
with the lowest score recorded to date at the Royal
Agricultural College. I concluded that a far more success-
ful method would have been to sit down a hundred times,
when the score, like myself, would have risen dramatically
to say the least. However, the main study of the day
concerned roots, and while more accomplished students about
me were minutely delving into the subterranean secrets of
that crafty semi-parasite Bastard Toadflax - secrets that
were revealed later to all, in the lab, through the electron
microscope - I perspired freely in my laborious attempts
to unearth the root structure of Common Gorse from the
pocket of leached acid soil whence it sprang, downwards
through the maze of jumbled lumps of Jurassic Limestone,
to finish up in depths no doubt undisturbed to this day.
Making good the landscape was just as difficult, but I still
have my surprisingly honest scale drawing whose authenticity
I shall defend to the last scrape of earth.
The back garden is where roots become a serious preoccupation,
for amongst one's tried and trusted friends lurk intruders
whose root systems boast every imaginable trick in the