Trees Pierced by other Trees

Abstract

UNDER this heading your correspondents discuss two distinct questions as if they were the same, namely the piercing of the stem of a tree by the head of another, as supposed by Mr. Murphy, and the growth of the root of a plant in or on another tree. Nothing can be more common than this last. Wherever soil aggregates the roots of seeds will grow as a matter of course. More than this, trees will strike roots into soil collected in their own forks, as I can show here, or down the rotten wood of their own trunks. A remarkable case of this may be seen in a yew tree in West Tisted churchyard near here. But nothing can be more opposite than the growth of the root and that of the head. The root grows to darkness; the head to the light.