Lamiaceae

“ V. Genus; VI. Species.
To illustrate: The white pine belongs to the highest great division (sub-kingdom) of the plant kingdom. The plants of this division all produce seeds, and hence are called “spermaphytes” (“seed plants”) . They may be divided into two groups (classes) , distinguished by certain peculiarities in the flowers and seeds. These are named respectively “gymnosperms” and “angiosperms,” and to the first our plant belongs. The gymnosperms may be further divided into several subordinate groups (orders) , one of which, the conifers, or cone-bearing evergreens, includes our plant. ”

“ The flowering plants have several distinct and visible organs for the formation and fertilization of their seed, to each of which is assigned a special and necessary office. In the flowerless section, on the contrary, there are none of these visibly separate agencies in reproduction, and what are usually termed the seeds do not show any parts representative of the developed product. In the true seeds, which belong to flowering plants alone, are contained the rudiments of a stem, leaves, and root, but in the spores of the flowerless plants nothing of the kind is found. ”

“ The Seed-bearing plants form the most numerous group in existence, not less than 120,000 species being known. The subkingdom was formerly known as Phanerogamia, or Phaenogamia and more recently as Anthophyta, this term signifying the presence of flowers, which characterizes most of the group. But the consideration that the spore-bearing organs of the Pine Family cannot well be regarded as flowers, and the fact that the production of seeds is the most characteristic difference between these plants and the Pteridophyta, are reasons which have led to the acceptance of the term here adopted. ”

“ Each leaf is traversed by two fibro-vascular bundles of entirely different structure from those of the ferns. Each is divided into two nearly equal parts, the wood (x) lying toward the inner, flat side of the leaf, the bast (T) toward the outer, convex side. This type of bundle, called “collateral,” is the common form found in the stems and leaves of seed plants. The cells of the wood or xylem are rather larger than those of the bast or phloem, and have thicker walls than any of the phloem cells, except the outermost ones which are thick-walled fibres like those under the epidermis. ”

“ In these the axis remains short, nearly as it is in the bud; the leaves therefore remain close together in sets or circles; the outer ones, those of the calyx, generally partake more or less of the character of foliage; the next set are more delicate, and form the corolla, while the rest, the stamens and pistils, appear under forms very different from those of ordinary leaves, and are concerned in the production of seed. This view gives to Botany an interest which one who merely notices the shape and counts the parts of blossoms, without understanding their plan, has no conception of. ”

“ In garden flowers, also, we see most striking results of continuous selection. By taking advantage of the tendency of stamens and carpels to change occasionally into petals, and of petals to increase in number, “double flowers” have been effected. When “doubling” is complete—that is, when the conversion into petals is thorough—no seed can of course be produced, and the plants must be propagated by cuttings. Different other slight natural variations, exaggerated by selection and cultivation, have been the source of innumerable “varieties” in our gardens. ”

“ I am afraid it has been rather a difficult history to follow step by step, and yet it is perfectly clear when once we master the succession of growths. Starting from a spore, the thread-mass or protonema gives rise to the moss-stems forming the dense green carpet, then the green flowers on some of the leaf-stems give rise to a plant-egg, which roots itself in the stem, and grows into a perfect plant without leaves, bearing merely the urn in which fresh spores are formed, and so the round goes on from year to year. ”

“ The essentials of flowers are stamens and pistils, giving rise to seeds, and the essential of a seed is an embryo (8) . Cryptogamous or Flowerless plants are propagated by Spores; and a spore is not an embryo-plantlet, but mostly a single plant-cell (399) .
483. Vascular Cryptogams, which compose the higher orders of this series of plants, have stems and (usually) leaves, constructed upon the general plan of ordinary plants; that is, they have wood (wood-cells and vessels, 408) in the stem and leaves, in the latter as a frame work of veins. ”

“ The modern flora of the earth admits of a grand twofold division into the Phænogamous, or flowering and seed-bearing plants, and the Cryptogamous, or flowerless and spore-bearing plants. In the former series, we have, first, those higher plants which start in life with two seed-leaves, and have stems with distinct bark, wood, and pith—the Exogens; secondly, those similar plants which begin life with one seed-leaf only, and have no distinction of bark, wood, and pith, in the stem—the Endogens ”

“ For want of due discrimination, as Miller has before observed, Nurserymen are apt to collect and mix with this species the seeds of another, viz. the amara, and which persons not much skilled in plants consider as the white variety; but a slight attention will discover it to be a very different plant, having smaller and longer heads, differing also in the shape of its leaves and seed vessels, too trifling a plant indeed to appear in the flower-garden. ”

“ The present plant, so far as we have been able to determine from cultivating it several years, in our Garden, Lambeth-Marsh, has not shewn the least disposition to increase in the same way, nor have any seedlings arisen from the seeds which it has spontaneously scattered: we have, indeed, found it a plant rather difficult to propagate, yet it is highly probable that at a greater distance from London, and in a more favourable soil, its roots, though not of the creeping kind, may admit of a greater increase, and its seeds be more prolific. ”

“ We have in cultivation varieties which are known to have originated in gardens and from the same parentage, but which differ [Pg 4] from each other so much in habit of growth, character of leaf and fruit and other respects, that if they had been found growing wild they would unhesitatingly be pronounced different species, and botanists are not agreed as to how our many and very different garden varieties should be classified botanically. Some contend that all of our cultivated sorts are varieties of but two distinct species, while others think they have originated from several. ”

“ The alternation of generations is as distinct in this Division as in the Mosses, but the sexual generation consists of only a small thallus, the prothallium, which bears directly the sexual organs, antheridia and archegonia; and the asexual generation, which arises from the fertilisation of the oosphere, is no longer a single short-lived sporangium, but a highly developed, generally perennial, plant provided with stem, leaves and true roots (Ferns, Horsetails, etc.) , the sporangia being borne on the leaves. ”

“ As a Botanist, desirous of seeing plants distinct in their characters, we could almost wish it were impossible to raise these foreign Geraniums from seeds; for, without pretending to any extraordinary discernment, we may venture to prophecy, that in a few years, from the multiplication of seminal varieties, springing from seeds casually, or perhaps purposely impregnated with the pollen of different sorts, such a crop will be produced as will baffle all our attempts to reduce to species, or even regular varieties. ”

“ In certain trees the bud first germinates within the seed, and, as it increases in size, the seeds split—all such seeds are, as it were, in two halves; again, all those of leguminous plants have plainly two lobes and are double—and then the root is immediately thrust out. But in cereals, the seeds being in one piece, this does not happen, but the root grows a little before [the shoot] .
‘Barley and wheat come up monophyllous, but peas, beans, and chick peas polyphyllous. All leguminous plants have a single woody root, from which grow slender side roots ... ”

“ From their situation they are out of ordinary sight; but they will well repay examination. For the vegetation that is carried on under ground is hardly less varied or important than that above ground. All their forms may be referred to four principal kinds: namely, the Rhizoma (Rhizome) or Rootstock, the Tuber, the Corm or solid bulb, and the true Bulb.
Fig. 97. Rootstocks, or creeping subterranean branches, of the Peppermint.
104. The Rootstock, or Rhizoma, in its simplest form, is merely a creeping stem or branch growing beneath the surface of the soil, or partly covered by it. ”

“ Some other basis for the classification of plants must therefore be chosen. More than a century ago, Linnaeus divided the vegetal kingdom into Cryptogamia and Phanerogamia, which may, for the present, be translated Flowerless and Flowering plants. Modern science has offered nothing better than the classification of Linnaeus, it being a natural one. The Flowerless plants, or the Cryptogamia, include: 1st, the Algae, or the greenish matter covering bricks, stones, etc., the green thread-plants of ponds and ditches, and the red and black sea-weed; 2d, the Fungi, or toadstools, mushrooms, etc. ”

“ Plants (chiefly herbs) with perfect and generally symmetrical hypogynous flowers; the stamens, counting sterile filaments, as many or commonly twice as many, and the lobes or cells (1–few-ovuled) of the ovary as many, as the sepals, the axis of the dry fruit persisting.—Seeds without albumen except in Oxalis. Flowers mostly 5-merous and the sepals usually distinct. Leaves never punctate. An order not easily defined, and including several strongly marked tribes or suborders which have been regarded by many botanists as distinct. ”

“ But before the examination of the Algae, and soon after of the Fungi also, led to such great results, the systematic botany of the higher plants underwent important changes through the methodical study of the embryology of the Muscineae and Vascular Cryptogams. These groups had been frequently and carefully examined by good observers since the last century, and the systematists, without penetrating deeply into the peculiarities of their organisation, had brought the species and genera, the families and even the higher divisions into tolerable order. ”

“ Thus we see that the flowering plant is essentially the equivalent of the asexual fern, and of the sporogonium of the moss, and the pollen cell and the embryo-sac represent the two spores of the higher cryptogams, and the pollen tube and the germinal vesicles and antipodal cells are all that remain of the sexual generation, seen in the moss as a leafy plant, and in the fern as a prothallium. ”

“ When the plant is developed, the sprouts bearing four or five leaves are removed and planted a Spanish yard apart, with surety of the success of the new plantation. The ramie is little sensitive to changes in temperature, and it neither breeds nor nourishes worms or caterpillars; neither gives life to mildew or parasitic growth. Each plant produces from $1.75 to $2.25 worth of fiber, the cost of its cultivation amounting to six cents. ”

“ The seeds were saved separately and sown the following spring and the expected result could soon be seen. Among some 250 individual plants I counted 22 with one or two deviations, and 10 with from three to nine four- or five-bladed leaves. Proportions nearly similar have been observed repeatedly. Better nourished individuals have produced more deviating leaves on one plant, partly owing to the larger number of stems and branches, and poor or average specimens have mostly been without any aberration or with only one or two abnormal leaves. ”

“ With the mobile algae, separation of the members of each generation is the rule, unless the individuals come to be associated in a thallus, or are grouped in contact with the substratum. Flowering plants that are relatively immobile, especially in the seed state, drop their seeds beneath and about the parent plants, and in consequence dense association of the new plants is the rule. ”

“ If any plants ought to be removed from these Classes, they must be such as have the structure of all the accessory parts of the flower exactly alike, (the essential parts, or stamens and pistils only, differing,) in both barren and fertile flowers; and especially such as have in one flower perfect organs of one kind, accompanied by rudiments of the other kind, for these rudiments are liable occasionally to become perfect. By this means dioecious species of a genus, as in Lychnis, Valeriana, Rumex, &c., would no longer be a reproach or inconvenience to the system. ”

“ The roots of air-plants, such as certain orchids, draw their nourishment from the air.
The experiment of marking roots and stem has been already tried, but it should be repeated. Repetition of experiments is always desirable, as it fixes his conclusions in the pupil's mind. The stem grows by a succession of similar parts, phytomera, each part, or phyton, consisting of node, internode, and leaf. Thus it follows that stems must bear leaves. The marked stems of seedlings show greater growth towards the top of the growing phyton. It is only young stems that elongate throughout. ”

“ Not less surprised are we to see united in a single leaf, or species, characters which are now generally found separated in far-distant families of plants." The flora of the Laramie group (Eocene) is quite distinct from the cretaceous. The Green River group includes the famous Florissante Basin, of which we have already given some account. The Miocene plants, which are described by groups according to where they occur, have not been sufficiently recovered to authorize any reliable conclusion regarding their relative stage in either group. ”