Flora

“ If we view the vegetation as a whole, we may be tempted to enquire first as to its origin and history. We know that plants have existed on the earth for millions of years, but that the plants of past ages were different from those of the present, just as those of the present will ultimately give place to other forms as yet undreamed of: that the vegetation on which we feast our eyes is, in fact, but the momentary expression of a never-ceasing process of life and change. ”

“ Here is the entire flora of the second period of the world — the transition period. These, humble garden plants with us, were tall trees in the early ages. Look, Axel, and admire it all. Never had botanist such a feast as this! ”

“ Now, such beauty could be obtained without any further aid from other plants; and in many cases it might be desirable to consider the trees and shrubs and their effect only, and let the turf spread in among them; but we have the privilege of adding to this beautiful tree and shrub life another world of beauty—the bulbs and herbaceous plants, and innumerable beautiful things which go to form the ground flora, so to say, of northern and temperate countries, and which light up the world with loveliness in meadow or copse, or wood or alpine pasture in the flowering season. ”

“ We see the growth of local flora, some of which are so clearly defined that we are able, by the aid of the imagination and of some well-preserved fragments, to reconstruct the principal genera and species of which they were composed. ”

“ The spleen is seldom felt where Flora reigns;
The lowering eye, the petulance, the frown,
And sullen sadness, that o'ershade, distort,
And mar the face of beauty, when no cause
For such immeasurable woe appears,
These Flora banishes, and gives the fair
Sweet smiles, and bloom less transient than her own. ”

“ I am quite enthusiastic about your idea; it is a grand idea to make a "Flora" a guide for knowledge already acquired and to be acquired. I have amused myself by speculating what an enormous number of subjects ought to be introduced into a Eutopian (696/2. A mis-spelling of Utopian.) Flora, on the quickness of the germination of the seeds, on their means of dispersal; on the fertilisation of the flower, and on a score of other points, about almost all of which we are profoundly ignorant. ”

“ Numerous and ever graceful as are the forms of the living vegetable world—and these have been extensively copied—there is a vast field within which diligent search will discover a great variety of plants, which are no less beautiful and far less common than their living analogues, in the bygone flora preserved so strangely in those strata which mark the mutations of our mysterious world. ”

“ The species composing our flora have been seen mostly, not as individuals, but as portions of regiments and armies, particular plants being mentioned but seldom, where required for purposes of illustration. In the final chapter it will be well to abandon this collective treatment, and glance at a few individual species or genera or small natural groups which possess features of interest of one sort or another. ”

“ Flora is represented by a sweetly innocent flower-seller, whose soft and winning face appears above clusters of roses, lilies, tulips, bluebells, and other flowers, while beneath the attributes of Flora are completed by a basket of fruits and vegetables. ”

“ In that manner we may assume that our country has in the course of time obtained its present covering of plants. Each of the above-named elements in our flora has doubtless its corresponding element in our fauna. ”

“ Form the contracted Flora of the town.
The reader unacquainted with the language of botany is informed, that the Flora of a place means the vegetable species it contains, and is the title of a book which describes them. ”

“ Go to a swale, swamp, roadside, forest, weedy field, or other place, and ask the pupil to note: (1) that the flora of the place is unlike that of places with different physical features; (2) that these particular plants grow together [365] because they can all survive under similar conditions; (3) what these conditions are,—whether sun, shade, dry soil, wet soil, sand, clay, rock; (4) what particular plant is most abundant or gives character to the society.
Fig. 255. Two plant societies,—the close-bitten sward and the rushy pond.
Study one society thoroughly. ”

“ Why, indeed, should there be plants at all? This great globe, with its whole land surface covered, save at the Poles and in desert regions, with green plants in ten thousand forms, is indeed something to be wondered at. ”

“ For the present purpose we may take our typical plant as consisting of subterranean roots and aerial leaves on the one hand, and aerial flowers on the other—the roots and leaves concerned especially with carrying on the life of the individual, the flowers with perpetuating the race. ”

“ SOME INTER-RELATIONS OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS The most important and fundamental difference between the animal and plant worlds is this: plants possess the power of manufacturing their food out of the inorganic materials of which it is composed, while animals cannot do this. Give an ordinary plant access to water with a pinch of mineral salts in it, to the air, and to sunlight, and by the agency of chlorophyll—the green colouring-matter of the leaves—the miracle will be accomplished, and dead materials transformed into living substance. ”

“ The location of doubtful sites of old collections. The supply of habitats, colours of flowers and time of flowering, where missing, The compilation of a Flora dealing with the Mosses, Algae, Fungi and other classes of vegetation not dealt with in this volume. ”

“ Altogether, the vegetation itself, though it contains a few more modern forms than the animal world, is still essentially antique in type, a strange survival from the forgotten flora of the chalk age, the oölite, and even the lias. ”

“ Plants, too, are more numerous in species than the higher animals, and are almost always better known; their affinities have been more systematically studied; and it may be safely affirmed that no explanation of the origin of the fauna of a country can be sound, which does not also explain, or at least harmonise with, the distribution and relations of its flora. ”

“ In the present edition of Illustrated Flora, the view is taken that the races composing many species are often too numerous and too slightly characterized to be described so as to be recognized; many of them have been described as species and many more as varieties, and varieties of different degrees of differentation have been suggested. ”

“ The influence on plants of their physical environment, and the intimate inter-relations of the vegetable kingdom with the other great manifestation of organic life, the animal kingdom, are briefly considered, as is also the unique relation existing between the plant world and the human race. ”

“ If it is allowable to assume that the prevalence of physical and chemical conditions similar to those which in bygone ages supported an abundant vegetation on our globe, would{14} produce plant life on another world, then we may imagine a luxuriant vegetation on Venus. ”

“ In such places we are faced with a vegetation exhibiting a great number of species and a marked variety of form, and by no means so easy to correlate with its environment as those which we have been considering. In a wide sense, the nature of the vegetation is largely dependent on the degree of aeration of the water and the amount of dissolved mineral salts which it contains, an increase of either (within limits) resulting in a richer flora. ”

“ Many water plants have flowers which rise into the air, following on which the flower-stem curves and the seed is ripened below the surface, free from the dangers of weather, of feeding water birds, and so on. ”

“ Plan of the flora.—For the reasons given in the preface, the descriptive part of the Flora has been reduced to the smallest limits compatible with the object of enabling the collector to determine his plants. The following were deemed sufficient for this purpose. 1. A key to the Natural Orders. 2. A key to the genera of each Natural Order. 3. ”

“ Although plants have means of dispersal far exceeding those possessed by animals, yet as a matter of fact comparatively few species are carried for very great distances, and the flora of a country taken as a whole usually affords trustworthy indications of its past history. ”

“ The possibilities of the wide-spread distribution of plant-seeds, for example, by storms, provides a far-reaching mingling of floras. ↑ The less completely the fauna be known, the less must also be the percentage number of identical species. ”

“ We have now glanced at the most distinctive of the plant formations which we meet with in our own country, and find that they accompany extreme conditions relating to water and soil: it remains to return to the consideration of the vegetation which develops under conditions of a more normal character—on ordinary soils, in fact, which are neither very wet nor very dry. ”

“ Apart from such special cases, the general dependence of animals upon plants is obvious, and is by no means confined to food-supply. Animals of all grades, from human beings to Caddis Worms, construct houses of vegetable materials; trees are the chosen home of large sections of our fauna, and the herbs of the field are the world for millions of tiny beings. ”

“ Among plants, as distinguished generally from animals by the production and abundant use of chlorophyll and of cellulose, we have still existing on the Earth a range of forms extending from almost the most primitive organism that we can imagine up to the splendid Seed Plant, specialized in a hundred ways. ”

“ PREFACE In the following chapters an attempt is made to deal, in a quite elementary way, with some of the wider aspects of plant life—to discuss questions which arise in the mind from a contemplation of the vegetation which clothes with a green mantle the surface of our own country. No essay is made to enumerate or define the plants to be met with in the different types of ground, or in the different geographical areas, which go to make up the British Isles: there are already plenty of excellent handbooks and local floras in which that aspect of native plant life is treated. ”

“ From the point of view of the botanist, agriculture consists of the destruction of the plant associations which for some thousands of years have occupied the ground, and their replacement by other plants which are useful to man. ”

“ The STEMS of plants may be looked on from two points of view—as a framework devoted to the display of the leaves and flowers, and as pipe-lines connected with the nutrition of the plant, conveying raw{110} materials from the roots to the leaves, and manufactured products from the leaves to all growing parts. ”

“ Hooker, whom I have often cited in this chapter, Mr. Darwin has spoken in the Introduction to his 'Origin of Species,' as one 'who had, for fifteen years, aided him in every possible way, by his large stores of knowledge, and his excellent judgement.' This distinguished botanist published his 'Introductory Essay to the Flora of Australia' [7] in 1859, the year after the memoir on 'Natural Selection' was communicated to the Linnæan Society, and a few months before the appearance of the 'Origin of Species.'
Having, in the course of his extensive travels, studied the botany of arctic, temperate, and tropical regions, and written on the flora of India, which he had examined at all heights above the sea, from the plains of Bengal to the limits of perpetual snow in the Himalaya, and having specially devoted his attention to 'geographical varieties,' or those changes of character which plants exhibit, when traced over wide areas and seen under new conditions; ”

“ The increased accumulations of material in our largest herbaria, the result of multiplied explorations, and the widely extended interest in the study of our native plants, seem now to justify the endeavor to supply a complete illustrated work adapted to general use. ”

“ Before we trespass on the domains of arboriculture, horticulture, or agriculture, under which heads the cultivation of useful or ornamental plants divides itself, some consideration is required of those plants which, quasi-wild, are usually included in accounts of the vegetation under the head of aliens, denizens, colonists, and so forth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But when the plant is old enough to flower, then branches devoid of roots grow out towards the light, so that the blossoms may be borne in the open, where they may be seen and visited by the numerous insects which, in their search for nectar, pollinate them. ”

“ In the re{27}maining parts, though drainage, grazing, and other human operations have wrought great changes, the face of the country still wears to a large extent its ancient appearance, and the flora is still in the main that which flourished before human activities began to put their impress upon it. ”

“ On the æsthetic side, again, while the beauty of birds and insects is a source of frequent delight, flowers play a part in daily life that the more delicate and sensitive animals can never do. Again, in the number of different species used, whether for profit or pleasure, the plant world takes precedence. This is especially the case as regards our farms and pleasure grounds, plants lending themselves much more readily to domestication than animals do. ”

“ Clambering through a wilderness of stony screes we emerge at length on a bare grey tableland on which, in contrast to the rich country below, vegetation is strangely sparse, and bare rock is everywhere in evidence. ”

“ Summing up, then, what has been sketched in this chapter, we must think of our plant as a very complicated and wonderful machine, of which the terrestrial Seed Plant is the highest expression. Water is the basis on which its activities are founded—the currency in which all business is transacted. The amount of water contained in a growing plant is seldom realized. ”