Note 4 — Summary of Bulletin No. 94.

It may be well to call attention to the fact that there are numerous instances where two different kinds of plants live together in intimate partnership relation. If only one of the two plants receives benefit from this relationship or association, then the plant receiving the benefit is celled a parasite. Thus the mistletoe is a parasite upon the elm or gum or other tree on which it lives. The mistletoe draws its nourishment from the tree. The tree is injured rather than benefited by the mistletoe. Dodder is also a parasitic plant, living upon other plants, except during the early part of its growth. Ticks and lice are common examples of animal parasites living upon other animals.

In some cases a relationship exists which is not parasitic but symbiotic. The term symbiosis, which is commonly used by biologists to define this relationship, means living together in mutual helpfulness. The association of bees and flowers may serve to illustrate this mutual helpfulness, although this is not an example of intimate symbiosis. Thus the bees obtain their food from the flowers and, in turn, the flowers, many of them, are incapable of producing seed or fruit unless the pollen is carried from the male flower to the female flower by bees or other agencies. It is well known that plant lice and ants are mutually helpful.

Likewise the association of nitrogen-gathering bacteria and leguminous plants is a relationship of mutual helpfulness and this is one of the best illustrations of what is meant by symbiosis. The legume furnishes a home for the bacteria and also furnishes in its juice or sap most of the nourishment upon which the bacteria live. The bacteria, on the other hand, take nitrogen from the air contained in the pores of the soil, and cause this nitrogen to combine with other elements in suitable form for plant food which is then given up to the legume for its own nourishment.

Another illustration of remarkable parasitism, if not, indeed, one of true symbiosis, is found in the common lichens living upon rocks and trees. The lichen is not a single plant, but two plants—an alga, which lives upon the wood or stone, and a fungus which lives upon the alga. Algæ also live in the free state separate from fungi, and the present opinion of botanists seems to be that when the two are associated in the form of lichens this association is not detrimental, but rather beneficial, to the alga, as well as to the parasitic fungus. If this is true, then it is another case of true symbiosis. (There is reason to believe that the fungus has some power to feed upon atmospheric nitrogen, and then to furnish combined nitrogen to the alga upon which it lives.)

In the symbiosis of leguminous plants and nitrogen-gathering bacteria we have a partnership or relationship of immeasurable value to agriculture. Here is a class of plants (legumes) that are capable of consuming or utilizing nitrogen in quantities larger than could possibly be obtained from ordinary soils for any considerable length of time. They have no power in themselves of taking nitrogen from the atmosphere, and to them the symbiotic relation with this low order of plants (the nitrogen-gathering bacteria) is especially helpful, and for the best results it is absolutely necessary.