  The onset of cool massive winds in evolved giants is correlated with an
evolutionary feature on the red giant branch known as the bump. Also at the
bump, shear instability in the star leads to magnetic fields that occur
preferentially on small length scales. Pneuman (1983) has suggested that the
emergence of small scale flux tubes in the Sun can give rise to enhanced
acceleration of the solar wind as a result of plasmoid acceleration (the melon
seed mechanism). In this paper, we examine the Pneuman formalism to determine
if it may shed some light on the process that drives mass loss from stars above
the bump. Because we do not currently have detailed information for some of the
relevant physical parameters, we are not yet able to derive a detailed model.
Instead, our goal in this paper is to explore a proof of concept. Using
parameters that are known to be plausible in cool giants, we find that the
total mass loss rate from such stars can be replicated. Moreover, we find that
the radial profile of the wind speed in such stars can be steep or shallow
depending on the fraction of the mass loss which is contained in the plasmoids.
This is consistent with empirical data which indicate that the velocity
profiles of winds from cool giants range from shallow to steep.
