When the last dynasty has fallen and the last empire passed away, when man himself has gone, there will probably still remain the swede. [The rutabaga or Swedish turnip.]  
There grew a swede in No Man’s Land by Croisille near the Somme, and it had grown there for a long while free from man.
 
It grew as you never saw a swede grow before. It grew tall and strong and weedy. It lifted its green head and gazed round over No Man’s Land. Yes, man was gone, and it was the day of the swede.
 
The storms were tremendous. Sometimes pieces of iron sang through its leaves. But man was gone and it was the day of the swede.
 
A man used to come there once, a great French farmer, an oppressor of swedes. Legends were told of him and his herd of cattle, dark traditions that passed down vegetable generations. It was somehow known in those fields that the man ate swedes.
 
And now his house was gone and he would come no more.
 
The storms were terrible, but they were better than man. The swede nodded to his companions: the years of freedom had come.
 
They had always known among them that these years would come. Man had not been there............