George Bentham

“ In the first place, it is a very common practice, in thus testing by cultivation the permanency of character in a plant, to remove it bodily to a garden, and there to propagate it by suckers, cuttings, or other modes of division—an experiment which may, indeed, show the immediate effects of soil, climate, or other extraneous influences on the individual—but, as a test of value between species and variety, it can be of no avail. It is the very method adopted by gardeners for perpetuating individual variations. ”

“ In the more perfect plants, their organs are comprised in the general terms Root, Stem, Leaves, Flowers, and Fruit. Of these the three first, whose function is to assist in the growth of the plant, are Organs of Vegetation ; the flower and fruit, whose office is the formation of the seed, are the Organs of Reproduction. ”

“ The Inflorescence of a plant is the arrangement of the flowering branches, and of the flowers upon them. An Inflorescence is a flowering branch, or the flowering summit of a plant above the last stem-leaves, with its branches, bracts, and flowers. ”

“ Style elongated, usually arched and protruding above the middle from the slit of the perianth-tube before the end is set free by the opening of the limb, finally erect and longer than the perianth, usually attenuate below the end, which is more or less thickened or dilated elliptical or linear, with a stigmatic slit descending from the apex to the middle or nearly to the base of the lower side. Fruit a small oblong or rarely ovoid obtuse indehiscent nut (or drupe?) with a single erect seed.—Shrubs sometimes almost growing into small trees, sometimes low and prostrate, often silky-villous. ”

“ The cultivation must be that of the gardener, whose object is to raise new varieties—not of the curator, desirous of keeping his botanic garden usefully cropped, and correctly named—still less of the botanist, who seeks to uphold a species he has set up. The former sows extensively in different localities, in order to have the greater chance of accidental aberration; he carefully watches his seedlings as they grow up, and selects his seeds for the next generation from such plants as show the slightest tendency to vary in the wished-for direction. ”

“ The Leaflets, Segments, Lobes, or Veins of leaves are
pinnate (feathered) , when there are several succeeding each other on each side of the midrib or petiole, compared to the branches of a feather. A pinnately lobed or divided leaf is called lyrate when the terminal lobe or segment is much larger and broader than the lateral ones, compared, by a stretch of imagination, to a lyre; runcinate, when the lateral lobes are curved backwards towards the base of the leaf; pectinate, when the lateral lobes are numerous, narrow, and regular, like the teeth of a comb. ”

“ Leaves all on long petioles, mostly once or twice or even three times divided into spreading lobes, long and narrow when few, shorter when more divided, obtuse or with short points, the whole leaf including the petiole from a few in. to above 1 ft. long, the lowest leaves as in the allied species usually entire. Flowering stems long and leafless, usually branched, the flowers small and distant. Perianth more incurved than in other species, not exceeding 2 lines, Stigma anteriorly produced on each side into a broad semicircular auricle or short broad lobe. ”

“ The Species, in the ordinary traditional acceptation of the word, designates the whole of the individuals supposed to be descended from one original plant, or pair of plants. But this definition is practically useless—for we have no means of ascertaining the hereditary history of individual plants—and is considered theoretically incorrect by those who deny the original creation of a certain number of individuals, or pairs of individuals, forming each a parent stock, from which as many constantly distinct races have descended. ”

“ The Fruit, consisting of the pistil or its lower portion, which persists or remains attached to the plant after the remainder of the flower has withered and fallen off. It enlarges and alters more or less in shape or consistence, becomes a seed-vessel, enclosing the seed until it is ripe, when it either opens to discharge the seed or falls to the ground with the seed. In popular language the term fruit is often limited to such seed-vessels as are or look juicy and eatable. ”

“ The specific identity of two or more individuals admits, therefore, but very rarely of positive proof; we must judge of it by inductive evidence, selecting by the careful consideration of what characters are known, especially in allied species, to remain permanent generation after generation, unaltered by change of soil, climate, or other circumstances, and what are the variations occasioned by causes which we can appreciate, or which are known to occur without assignable cause. ”

“ Flowers axillary or terminal, solitary or in racemes or spikes, often condensed into umbels heads or cones, each flower or pair of flowers subtended by a bract, very deciduous in some genera and perhaps sometimes really deficient, the pedicels always without bracteoles.
Proteaceæ, with their chief seat in Australia and South Africa, extend on the one hand to New Caledonia, the Indian Archipelago, and tropical Asia, chiefly eastern, to Japan, and on the other to South America. The seven tribes of the Order are all in Australia. ”

“ The most important character, in plants, will always be that which in the greatest number of species (or groups of species) is the most constantly accompanied by the greatest general resemblances among those species, and differences from all others—that which collects into the same group species showing the greatest general conformity in the structure and economy of all their parts, and which may, therefore, be supposed to be the most uniformly influenced by or acting upon the specific constitution of plants. ”

“ Leaves crowded, narrow, 3 to 6 in. long, pinnatifid, the lobes distant, rigid, pungent-pointed, 11⁄2 to 3 lines long, divaricate or incurved, the margins of the lobes and of the narrow rhachis closely revolute, the under surface hoary or white where open. Flower-heads axillary, closely surrounded by long floral leaves. Involucre narrow ovoid, the bracts linear or a few of the shorter ones lanceolate with long points, all villous with rather long soft hairs, the inner ones 11⁄2 in. long, but the upper half reflexed when the flowers are open and falling away soon after. ”

“ The term tuber is applied to a short, thick, more or less succulent rootstock or rhizome, as well as to a root of that shape (20) , although some botanists propose to restrict its meaning to the one or to the other. An Orchis tuber, called by some a knob, is an annual tuberous rootstock with one bud at the top. A potato is an aimual tuberous rootstock with several buds.
26. A bulb is a stock of a shape approaching to globular, usually rather conical above and flattened underneath, in which the bud or buds are concealed, or nearly so, under scales. ”

“ The truly German idea of taking one species or genus as a normal type of a genus or order, and grouping others around it as more perfect, or reduced, or collaterally aberrant forms, leads to no practical results. However well it may read in chamber speculations, it produces nothing but confusion when applied to the actual grouping of species. There is no plant which arguments like those usually brought forward may not show equally well to be an aberrant form of almost any number of different types. ”

“ A procumbent shrub spreading to 2 or 3 ft., the branches slender, silky-villous when young. Leaves divided into 3 to 5 filiform segments usually with a depressed lateral gland at the end, those of the branches often short and nearly glabrous, the floral leaves crowded, often 1 in. long, and ciliate with a few long fine glabrous hairs. Involucres 2 or more together in terminal clusters and nearly sessile, the bracts nearly glabrous. Perianth not above 1⁄2 in. long, villous with short spreading hairs, the laminæ glabrous inside or with very few hairs behind the anthers which are all perfect. ”

“ Although roots proceed usually from the base of the stem or stock, they may also be produced from the base of any bud, especially if the bud lie along the ground, or is otherwise placed by nature or art in circumstances favourable for their development, or indeed occasionally from almost any part of the plant. ”

“ The plant is stationary and must take what food comes within its reach; and that food, and the mode of absorbing it, is very similar in all species; nor can we discover any other final cause why one set of plants, for instance, should always have alternate and another opposite leaves—why in Digitalis purpurea there should be on an average 1200 seeds fecundated and ripened for every two pair of stamens, whilst in several Acacias there should be 10,000 stamens to every head of flowers, which sets and ripens some half-dozen or a dozen seeds only. ”

“ A dwarf shrub, the stems sometimes scarcely any besides the underground or creeping trunk, rarely ascending to nearly 1 ft. Leaves 4 to 8 in. long, pinnate, divided almost or quite to the midrib into numerous regular triangular or falcate segments, obtuse or rarely acute, 1 to 3 lines long, verying in breadth, those towards the end of the leaf usually separated by acute sinuses, the lower ones more distant and decurrent, or all different in this respect in different leaves, all rather thick, with revolute margins, white underneath. ”