A Thistle Mystery
An old country and botanists' puzzle has been more or less solved by recent research. The creeping thistle continually appears in quantity on newly disturbed ground. For example, I dug a pit for the reception of compost, and it presently became a copse of thistles, some of which finally penetrated the compost. It was generally supposed that its excellent wings carried the seed here, there and everywhere, but numbers of people have tried in vain in repeated experiments to grow this thistle from seed ; and for myself amid the multitudinous wings of thistledown I have seldom, if ever, found a seed adhering. The wings fly on their own, even into Fleet Street. A writer in the Ministry's magazine Agriculture reports the careful unearthing of these mysterious thistles, and has failed to find a seedling; all grew from bits of running root, which had lain doggo for an unconscionable time till revived by the presence of oxygen. The writer does not mention the biennial thistle which seeds very freely and germinates readily, unlike the creeping thistle, as I have seen on dumps of urban rubbish.
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