Aspects of Plant Life

CHAPTER I. On Farleton Fell

ON FARLETON FELL

“I got up the mountain edge, and from the top saw the world stretcht out, cornlands and forest, the river winding among meadow-flats, and right off, like a hem of the sky, the moving sea.”--MAURICE HEWLETT: Pan and the Young Shepherd.

Travelling from Scotland by the London and North-Western Railway, as the train roars down the long incline which leads from Shap to the coastal plain of Lancashire, the eye catches, on the left-hand side, a strange grey hill of bare rock rising abruptly, the last outpost of the mountains. It is so different in appearance from the Westmorland fells which have just been traversed, that one looks at it with curiosity, and desires an opportunity of a nearer acquaintance. During the preceding half-hour we have been passing through country of the type that is familiar in the Lake District and in Wales--picturesque ridgy hills with rocky or grassy slopes, and fields and trees occupying the lower grounds. But over much of the surface of this grey hill there appear to be scarcely any plants. A dense scrub of Hazel and other small trees clings to its screes in patches, but the continuous mantle of vegetation is lacking.

The train speeds on through fertile ground with ripening crops and woods standing dense and green, and now on the right, where the low land merges with the sea, we view salt-marshes, which display yet another type of plant growth. Here trees and shrubs are absent, and the low-growing grey and green plants look fleshy and stunted.

In the last thirty miles, indeed, since the train left the summit of Shap, we have seen a number of very different types of vegetation, which appear associated with different types of landscape--the moory uplands, the naked limestone, the deep woods, the desolate salt-marsh. Let us in imagination climb the steep scarp of Farleton Fell, the grey hill of our opening sentence, and consider at leisure some aspects of this teeming plant world and its relations to the Earth on which it grows.

Clambering through a wilderness of stony screes we emerge at length on a bare grey tableland on which, in contrast to the rich country below, vegetation is strangely sparse, and bare rock is everywhere in evidence. If we let the eye sweep round the horizon, we note a similar contrast displayed on broader lines. On the one hand is the mountain-land, with its carpet of grass and heather extending to the very summits; on the other hand the broad expanses of bare sand and mud fringing Morecambe Bay, apparently devoid of any vegetation. And it occurs to us that, before we ponder over the variety and distribution of plant life on this world, we are faced at once with a more profound problem. On this breezy summit, with our minds expanded and stimulated by the sunlight and the breeze, and the broad and beautiful panorama spread around, we must for a moment try to take a wider outlook than

Him that vexed his brains, and theories built Of gossamer upon the brittle winds, Perplexed exceedingly why plants were found Upon the mountain-tops, but wondering not Why plants were found at all, more wondrous still!

I trust the paraphrase may be pardoned. Why, indeed, should there be plants at all? This great globe, with its whole land surface covered, save at the Poles and in desert regions, with green plants in ten thousand forms, is indeed something to be wondered at. One fascinating question that arises is this: How far is our “lukewarm bullet” unique in its possession of a green plant mantle? Have we any evidence for the supposition that plants exist on the Moon, or on any planets of the solar system other than the Earth?

Vegetation as we know it on our world requires certain physical and chemical conditions for its existence. For instance, a temperature which, at least during the growing season, is well above the freezing-point of water is requisite; yet the temperature must remain a long way below the boiling-point of water; neither could plants as we know them exist in the absence of an atmosphere containing oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water vapour, and incidentally, by its capacity for retaining heat, warding off violent extremes of temperature which otherwise would be a daily and nightly occurrence. What evidence is there as to the condition in these respects of those heavenly bodies which are sufficiently near to allow us to know something of them? To take first our own Moon. Astronomers are agreed that on the Moon there is neither air nor water; it is a dead mass of solid material, scorched by the Sun by day, held in the grip of appalling frost by night. The Moon was no doubt at some remote period of the Earth’s history cast off from that body, and it carried off with it a portion of the Earth’s atmosphere, or of the materials which later formed the Earth’s atmosphere. But the attraction of the Moon is so small that it was unable to retain these gases on its surface; they diffused into space, much of them returning probably to the Earth, leaving the Moon without any covering of nitrogen or oxygen or hydrogen or water vapour, and thus condemning it to permanent sterility.

As regards Mercury, the planet nearest the Sun, conditions appear equally unfavourable. Mercury has ceased to revolve round the Sun, and continually presents one side towards that luminary. On the opposite side an extraordinarily low temperature prevails, low enough to solidify and bind permanently most of the gases of any possible atmosphere; while, on the other side, the very high temperature, due to perpetual and intense sunshine, has assisted the diffusion into space of the more volatile gases, such as hydrogen, which might have remained unfrozen.

The question of life on Mars, which in many respects suggests conditions resembling those prevailing on our own globe, has long occupied the attention of men of science, among whom strong advocates of a Martian flora and fauna have not been wanting. If we may accept one of the most recent summaries of the pros and cons of this question, the conditions are not hopeful. Although an atmosphere exists, it appears to be extremely thin; water vapour seems to be present in only very limited quantity; the temperature is very low, and, except in the warmer portions of the planet during the summer season, would be insufficient to support life. The evidence suggests a frigid climate, with dust-storms whirling over vast deserts and salt seas frozen solid, while near the Poles land and sea alike are buried under snow. Summer produces a slight thawing, but even then the cold, salt-saturated soil would appear to be very unfavourable for plant growth. Arrhenius suggests that the presence of a low vegetation such as snow Algæ near the Poles in summer is as much as could be hoped for under the conditions prevailing on Mars.

Of the planets whose distance from the Sun is small enough to allow heat and light to reach them in quantity sufficient to permit of vegetation such as we know it, there remains Venus, and here at last we meet with conditions suitable for life. Venus possesses an atmosphere densely charged with water vapour, and maintaining a high temperature all the year round. The conditions prevailing there recall, in fact, those believed to have existed on the Earth during the Carboniferous Period, when our great deposits of coal, composed of the remains of tropical plants, were laid down in marshes and steaming lagoons; but on Venus the conditions are still more extreme--the temperature higher, and the moisture much greater, than those of Carboniferous times. If it is allowable to assume that the prevalence of physical and chemical conditions similar to those which in bygone ages supported an abundant vegetation on our globe, would produce plant life on another world, then we may imagine a luxuriant vegetation on Venus. Whether such an assumption is reasonable is a very interesting and highly speculative question, which the present writer is not competent to discuss. But if one is inclined to indulge in speculation, it may fairly be asked, Why should one limit the possibilities of life to the strict range of conditions under which it is manifested on our Earth? May not the inhabitants of the Sun, ensconced ninety million miles away in a comfortable temperature of 6,500° Centigrade, have long since proved to their own complete satisfaction the impossibility of the existence of life under the appalling conditions of climate prevailing on the Earth? Who can say? There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. A quotation from one of the foremost of modern men of science helps us to put such flights of thought in their proper perspective. “One can hardly emerge from such thoughts,” writes Soddy, in pointing out the remarkable adaptation of the human eye to the peculiarities of the Sun’s light, so as to make the best of that wave-length of which there is most, “without an intuition that, in spite of all, the universal Life Principle, which makes the world a teeming hive, may not be at the sport of every physical condition, may not be entirely confined to a temperature between freezing and boiling points, to an oxygen atmosphere, to the most favourably situated planet of a sun at the right degree of incandescence, as we are almost forced by our experience of life to conclude. Possibly the Great Organizer can operate, under conditions where we could not for an instant survive, to produce beings we should not, without a special education, recognize as being alive like ourselves.”

Continue reading Aspects of Plant Life free in the Wunder reader →