Word: rootlet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...plants produce vast numbers of barely visible seeds, sometimes as many as half a million from a single plant. The seeds fall to the ground and mix with the soil, where they can lie for 20 years without losing vitality. A seed does not normally germinate until the rootlet of a suitable plant creeps close to it through the soil. Influenced by a mysterious substance that the root secretes, the seed wakes up. Out of it pokes a root that snakes through the soil, attaches itself to the host, and thrusts sucking tubes into its juicy tissues. Then life begins...
...Music Department, which had been a sort of gypsy in the University, camping at one time in the chem labs and later on in the Bursar's office. Harvard had not been the world's most congenial patron for the art. Puritan distrust of music as a rootlet of evil lingered on throughout the 19th century: Francis Parkman was said to have ended his yearly budget report at the Corporation with "Musica Delenda Est." By 1914, however, most of this sinfulness seemed to have worn off, and music was looked on, at worst, as a useless frill...
| 1 |