Herbivory

“ Starting from that single early form, they have gone on developing ever since, from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, assuming ever more varied shapes, till at last they have reached their present enormous variety of tree and shrub, and herb and sea-weed, of beast and bird, and fish and creeping insect. ”

“ Let us look for the Will in plant-life. Passing rapidly over the wonderful evidences in the cases of the fertilization of plants by insects, the plant shaping its blossom so as to admit the entrance of the particular insect that acts as the carrier of its pollen, think for a moment how the distribution of the seed is provided for. Fruit trees and plants surround the seed with a sweet covering, that it may be eaten by insect and animal, and the seed distributed. ”

“ The modifications within the species are oftentimes such as to change greatly the aspect of the plant; the trees may be dwarf or luxuriant, smooth or pubescent; may differ in branching habit, in leaf-form, in size and color of the flowers, in the time of opening of leaf and flower-buds, in color, shape, size, flesh, flavor and time of ripening of fruit, in the stone and in all such characters as climate and soil environment would be liable to modify. ”

“ What a struggle between the several kinds of trees must here have gone on during long centuries, each annually scattering its seeds by the thousand; what war between insect and insect—between insects, snails, and other animals with birds and beasts of prey—all striving to increase, and all feeding on each other or on the trees or their seeds and seedlings, or on the other plants which first clothed the ground and thus checked the growth of the trees! ”

“ Four males, four females. Many plants, like many animals, are furnished with arms for their protection; these are either aculei, prickles, as in rose and barberry, which are formed from the outer bark of the plant; or spinæ, thorns, as in hawthorn, which are an elongation of the wood, and hence more difficult to be torn off than the former; or stimuli, stings, as in the nettles, which are armed with a venomous fluid for the annoyance of naked animals. The shrubs and trees, which have prickles or thorns, are grateful food to many animals, as goosberry, and gorse ”

“ When we take into consideration the multitude of species which compose the vegetable kingdom, even in any one country or climate, it is obvious that some arrangement, some regular mode of naming and distinguishing them, must be very desirable, and even necessary, for retaining them in our own memory, or for communicating to others any thing concerning them. Yet the antients have scarcely used any further classification of plants than the vague and superficial division into trees, shrubs and herbs, except a consideration of their places of growth, and also of their qualities. ”

“ The Families, or Genera, are characterized by the analogy of all the parts of the flower or fructification. The Species are distinguished by the foliage of the plant; and the Varieties by any accidental circumstance of colour, taste, or odour; the seeds of these do not always produce plants similar to the parent; as in our numerous fruit-trees and garden flowers; which are propagated by grafts or layers.
The first eleven Classes include the plants, in whose flowers both the sexes reside; and in which the Males or Stamens are neither united, nor unequal in height when at maturity ”

“ We see how the particular species of orchid must have chosen the particular species of bee, and the particular species of bee that particular species of orchid, and the bee and orchid set themselves to adapt themselves to one another, the orchid using all the devices of colour, scent, sweetness of honey, to attract the insect, and gradually shaping itself so that the insect can better reach the honey, and the insect lengthening its proboscis and otherwise adapting itself so that it can better secure what it wants. ”

“ There is also a fine, active, intelligent-looking red species, intermediate in size between the above. They dwell in the ground, and build large piles of seed husks, leaves, straw, etc., over their nests. Their food seems to be mostly insects and plant leaves, seeds and sap. How many mouths Nature has to fill, how [Pg 47] many neighbors we have, how little we know about them, and how seldom we get in each other’s way! ”

“ The external form and character of each plant, as it came from the hand of nature, was probably sufficiently peculiar to render it readily distinguishable from those of every other species: but varieties of soil, of climate, and of culture applied for other purposes, have so far mixed and confounded the primary characteristics of many species, that experiments, such as those above described, now afford probably the only source of decisive evidence. ”

“ They are very mischievous to the naturalist's collection of plants and seeds, tearing them and the books, in which they are kept, to pieces, as it were in wantonness, and carrying away such as are edible, in which they are often assisted by the land-crabs. ”

“ There are several species hardy and well suited for flower-garden purposes, and, more advantageous still, distinct from each other. The effect afforded by them, when well developed, is equal to that of any hothouse plant that we can venture in the open air for the summer, while they are green and ornamental at all seasons. ”

“ The Deviations, as they may be called, from the assumed type or pattern of flower are most various and extensive. The differences between one species and another of the same genus are comparatively insignificant; those between different genera are more striking; those between different families and classes of plants more and more profound. They represent different adaptations to conditions or modes of life, some of which have obvious or probable utilities, although others are beyond particular explanation. The principal modifications may be conveniently classified. ”

“ In the two last chapters I have given in some detail the range of variation, and the history, as far as known, of a considerable number of plants, which have been cultivated for various purposes. But some of the most variable plants, such as Kidney-beans, Capsicum, Millets, Sorghum, etc., have been passed over; for botanists are not at all agreed which kinds ought to rank as species and which as varieties; and the wild parent- species are unknown. ”

“ On the other hand, in these simple organisms there is no division into stem, leaves, and flowers, almost every portion is concerned in the process of reproduction—each filament or frond represents a perfect herb, shrub, or tree, and every sporiferous cell is the analogue of a flower. In the phænogamic class the floral colours are useful as attractions to insects of various kinds, which, visiting them for food, carry away the pollen to other flowers, and so conduce to their fertilization. ”

“ The most familiar branch of phytoecology, as it concerns adaptations for insect visitations, is that which relates to the production of seed. Floral structures, so wonderfully varied in form and color and withal attractive to every lover of the beautiful, are familiar to all, and it only needs to be said in passing that these infinite forms are for the same end—namely, the union of the seed germs, if they may be so styled, of different and often widely separated blossoms. ”

“ They fly over the sea and carry seeds to lonely islands, which, but for the birds, might be barren.
So by means of its insect partners, the plant’s seed germs grow, and perfect seeds. By means of the bird partners, the seeds are carried from place to place. Thus many plants grow, and men are clothed, and warmed, and fed. ”

“ Their motions are as animated as their music. They pass from twig to twig, upwards or downwards, examining every opening bud and leaf, and securing an insect or a larva at every leap. Their flight is short, light, and easy. ”

“ Insects.—Dytiscus (p. 361) lays eggs. Pupae of cabbage-white butterflies and other Lepidoptera may be found. [Pg 405]
[Pg 406]
APRIL. PLANT LIFE.
Plants usually in flower.—Wallflower, shepherd’s purse, buttercup, anemone, marsh marigold, common vetch, plum, pear, strawberry, primrose, cowslip, daisy, dandelion, speedwell, red deadnettle, daffodil, wild hyacinth, wild tulip, rushes, arum, annual meadow grass, oak, birch, alder, willow, poplar, elm, ash, and others.
Trees which unfold their leaf-buds.—Larch, horse chestnut, beech, elm, sycamore.
Elm fruits (p. 154) are abundant ”

“ He plucked the plants one after another, danced, hugged me in his arms, and exultingly told me that he had got not merely a new species, but a new genus. When we returned home, the naturalist opened the bundle which he had brought on his back, and took out a journal rendered water-proof by means of a leather case, together with a small parcel of linen, examined the new plant, and wrote its description. ”

“ Plants must be collected both in flower and in fruit, with the underground parts as perfect as may be. Seedlings and rosettes should be included whenever present. In pressing, one or two leaves should be arranged with the lower side uppermost to admit of the ready comparison of both surfaces. Opened flowers are valuable for flower biology, while seeds and fruits are desirable for showing migration contrivances. The ferns, mosses, and lichens of the formation should be fully represented, together with the more important fungi and algae. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One is conscious of vast trackless wastes of heath and moor, of impenetrable forests and terror-infested bogs; but of the details of plant life there is scarcely a word. In these manuscripts alone do we find what plant life meant to our ancestors, and, as with all primitive nations, their belief in the mystery of herbs is almost past our civilised understanding. ”

“ The buds and bulbs of plants constitute what is termed by Linneus the Hybernaculum, or winter cradle of the embryon vegetable. The buds arise from the bark on the branches of trees, and the bulbs from the caudex of bulbous-rooted plants, or the part from which the fibres of the root are produced, they are defended from too much moisture, and from frosts, and from the depredations of insects by various contrivances, as by scales, hairs, resinous varnishes, and by acrid rinds. ”

“ ORCHIDS OR AIR PLANTS.
It is not easy at all times to say where vegetable life ends, and animal life begins; and were we required to determine the line of separation between merely organic and sentient life, by the distinctive forms of each, the recently discovered forms of vegetable life would greatly increase the difficulty. Resemblances to external forms of animal life exist in several portions of the vegetable world, but they abound in Orchidaceous plants, the latest, rarest, richest, and most beautiful addition to our floral treasures. ”

“ With the other secondary objects of occupying and ornamenting the barren wastes of the earth with plants, and thus supplying food to hosts of insects, and to the higher animals, nature also has primarily in view, the production of perfect seeds for the perpetuation of their species, by the plants that are profusely scattered over the globe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ VEGETABLE PLACENTATION. Buds the viviparous offspring of vegetables; placentation in bulbs and seeds; placentation of buds in the roots, hence the rising of sap in the spring, as in vines, birch, which ceases as soon as the leaves expand; production of the leaf of Horse-chesnut, and of its new bud; oil of vitriol on the bud of Mimosa killed the leaf also; placentation shewn from the sweetness of the sap; no umbilical artery in vegetables.
NOTE XXXVI ... VEGETABLE CIRCULATION. Buds set in the ground will grow if prevented from bleeding to death by a cement ”

“ The transition from one so-called kingdom into another presumably higher one is a purely arbitrary line marked by man, and often impossible to define. The animalcule and the insectivorous plant know no boundaries between the animal and the vegetable. And who shall say that the sun-dew or the bladderwort is not a higher organism than the amoeba? Animated plants, and vegetating. animals parallel each other. Several hundred carnivorous plants in all parts of the world have now been named by scientists. ”

“ BUDS AND BULBS. A tree is a swarm of individual plants; vegetables are either oviparous or viviparous; are all annual productions like many kinds of insects? Hybernacula, a new bark annually produced over the old one in trees and in some herbaceous plants, whence their roots seem end-bitten; all bulbous roots perish annually; experiment on a tulip-root; both the leaf-bulbs and the flower-bulbs are annually renewed. ”

“ Form, color, the secretion of sweetish nectar, the night or day blooming of different kinds of flowers, every device that will make fertilization certain, by the flower itself, by insects, or even by the wind, is used in such prodigal fashion, that we come to see the importance of it to all plants only by a realization of the complexity of it and the provisions against its failure. ”