back to various parts of the plant.

The stem then serves as a conductor or a passage for food and moisture
between roots and leaves.

Visit a strawberry bed or search for wild strawberry plants. Notice
that from the older and larger plants are sent out long, slender,
leafless stems with a bud at the tip. These stems are called runners.
Find some runners that have formed roots at the tip and have developed
a tuft of leaves there, forming new plants. Find some black raspberry
plants and notice that some of the canes have bent over and taken root
at the tips sending up a new shoot and thus forming a new plant. You
know how rapidly wire grass and Bermuda grass will overrun the garden
or farm. One way in which they do this is by sending out underground
stems which take root at the joints and so form new plants.

Another use of the stem then is to produce new plants.

On the farm we make use of this habit of stems when we wish to
produce new white potato plants. We cut an old potato in pieces and
plant them. The buds in the eyes grow and form new plants. One way of
getting new grape plants is to take a ripened vine in the fall and cut
it in pieces with two or three buds and plant them so that one or both
of the buds are covered with soil. The pieces will take root and in
the spring will send up new shoots and thus form new plants.

You can obtain new plants from geranium, verbena, nasturtium and many
other flowering plants, by cutting and planting slips or parts of the
stems from them.