Higher plant

“ Just as that small portion of nourishing matter which is deposited in the seed feeds the embryo when it germinates, so the much larger portion deposited in the tuber nourishes its buds, or eyes, when they likewise grow, the next spring, into new plants. And the great supply enables them to shoot with a greater vigor at the beginning, and to produce a greater amount of vegetation than the seedling plant could do in the same space of time ”

“ When one takes up a plant his attention is naturally first drawn to its general appearance and structure, whether it is a complicated one like one of the flowering plants, or some humbler member of the vegetable kingdom,—a moss, seaweed, toadstool,—or even some still simpler plant like a mould, or the apparently structureless green scum that floats on a stagnant pond. ”

“ When the process of germination has terminated, if the young plant is brought under the yellow glass, it grows most healthfully, and forms an abundance of wood, the leaves having an unusually dark green colour, from the formation of a large quantity of chlorophylle. Plants do not, however, produce flowers with readiness under this medium ”

“ They never grow into branches, but detach themselves when full grown, fall to the ground, and take root there to form new plants.
Fig. 110. Bulblets in the axils of leaves of a Tiger Lily.
117. Consolidated Vegetation. An ordinary herb, shrub, or tree is evidently constructed on the plan developing an extensive surface. In fleshy rootstocks, tubers, corms, and bulbs, the more enduring portion of the plant is concentrated, and reduced for the time of struggle (as against drought, heat, or cold) to a small amount of exposed surface, and this mostly sheltered in the soil. ”

“ In the plant, the eye or germinative point opens to a leaf, then to another leaf, with a power of transforming the leaf into radicle, stamen, pistil, petal, bract, sepal, or seed. The whole art of the plant is still to repeat leaf on leaf without end, the more or less of heat, light, moisture, and food, determining the form it shall assume. ”

“ In such situations the plant grows with luxuriance, and from the large size and brilliant yellow of its star-like flowers, the vigorous growth of the rich green foliage, and the long succulent stems, it becomes a striking feature even in the mass of bold healthy vegetation so commonly found by the edges of a water-course: these, therefore, are the characters which, in embodying the plant in any design, we must endeavour to enforce. ”

“ Instead of taking in their sustenance by means of a mouth, they suck it up by means of roots. These draw from the soil the particular nutriment that is required in the form of sap, and this is distributed to the branches and leaves of the plant. Heat and moisture are necessary in order to set the sap in motion. Air and light are imbibed by the leaves of the plants. The various colors of plants are drawn from the rays of the sun.
All plants are propagated by seeds. These, however minute, contain all the members of the parent plant—stalk, leaf and flower. ”

“ The commonest kind of leaf, which therefore may be taken as the type or pattern, is an expanded green body, by means of which the plant exposes to the air and light the matters which it imbibes, exhales certain portions, and assimilates the residue into vegetable matter for its nourishment and growth.
119. But the fact is already familiar (10-30) that leaves occur under other forms and serve for other uses,—for the storage of food already assimilated, as in thickened seed-leaves and bulb-scales; for covering, as in bud-scales ”

“ The very simplest plants (if such may specifically be called plants rather than animals, or one may say, the simplest living things) are mere particles, or pellets, or threads, or even indefinite masses of protoplasm of vague form, which possess powers of motion or of changing their shape, of imbibing water, air, and even other matters, and of assimilating these into plant-stuff for their own growth and multiplication. Their growth is increase in substance by incorporation of that which they take in and assimilate. ”

“ If, then, any plant happens by a favorable combination of circumstances to modify the shape of its seed in such a manner that it can be more readily conveyed to open or unoccupied spots, it will be able in future to economize its strength, and thus to give both itself and its offspring a better chance in the struggle for life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In addition to grace and beauty of line and an entire absence of crowding, it requires the expression of the thought that what you have before you is not simply cut flowers but a growing [pg 337] plant—which must always have an uneven number of branches. Buds and even withered leaves are used as well as flowers, in order to suggest the natural mode of growth. By keeping the stems together for a few inches at the base a strong plant is indicated, springing from the surface of the water, which is supposed to represent the surface of the earth. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the nature of the plant and the particular mode in which it gathers its nutriment, have a most important influence. Certain plants are almost entirely dependent on the soil for their organic constituents, while others derive a large proportion of them from the air, and a plant of the latter class will flourish in a soil in which one of the former is incapable of growing. ”

“ You know that they are stowing away their food in warmer, safer places than can be supplied by the delicate leaves. And when all the food has been drawn out of the leaves, and packed away in the right spots, then the plant finishes a piece of work it began some time before. This piece of work is the building-up of a row of little cells just where the leafstalk joins the stem or branch. When this row is complete, it acts almost like a knife, loosening the stalk from the stem. ”

“ The shoot is bent in an undulating fashion, and from every covered portion roots will form and a plant may be obtained. The covered layer also possesses the advantage of giving more than one plant, but the roots are apt to form so continuously that definite and strong plants are rarely obtained; these rooted portions may be treated as cuttings, however, with good results. ”

“ Corresponding to the invariable order of growth and progression in a plant as represented by the seed (enclosing the life and unifying principle) stem, branches, leaves and fruit, is the order of ascent, or perhaps it should be descent, by which Art takes concrete form. First there is the initial flow, then the root-point answering to the seed or unifying principle, then follow in turn, lines, planes, and solids. The fruit and the solids appear to be the culmination of the initial flow, but really they contain a potential power of growth in a realizable fluid motion. ”

“ The long stems are clothed with large and handsome pinnate leaves, and the yellowish-green inflorescence appears towards the end of summer. The male plant has long been known as a very strong, graceful, and effective herb. The female plant, however, remains green much longer than the male, and when profusely laden with fruit, each shoot droops and the whole plant improves in aspect. It should not be forgotten in any selection of hardy plants of free growth and imposing aspect. ”

“ God gives the seed a body "as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed its own body."
It is true that what are called "varieties" can be produced among cultivated plants, as among birds and animals, by change of food and climate, and by care and training. The same plant will soon look very different if taken from a dry, sunny spot, and placed in a damp, shady corner. I have heard that if plants are moved from their home on the seashore, and placed in a dry, hot place, their thick, fleshy leaves will in time quite change their character, becoming thin and hairy. ”

“ In order to the reception of the Professor’s theory, it is necessary to hold, in the first place, that the creation of each species of plant took place, not by repetition of production in various widely-separated centres, but in some single centre, from which the species propagated itself by seed, bud, or scion, across the special area which it is now found to occupy. ”

“ As the kernel swells with heat and moisture, its starches and albumens get oxidised and produce the motions and rearrangements of particles that result in the growth of a new plant. First a little head rises towards the sunlight and a little root pushes downward towards the moist soil beneath. The business of the root is to collect water for the circulating medium—the sap or blood of the plant—as well as a few mineral matters required for its stem and cells ”

“ The tremendous energy of growth covers bark and branches with creeping plants innumerable, with a profusion of moss, liverworts, and ferns such as we cannot imagine from our own experiences in this country. So the roots of our orchid find on the branches rich leaf-mould, 332 and it lives happily and contentedly on the salts and moisture accumulated by the mosses and other plants. ”

“ It is desirable that young plants should be kept growing vigorously all the time, and frequent shifting is necessary. Whenever the earth becomes full of roots, or the ball of earth is covered with a network of roots, the plant should be shifted into a pot a size larger. ”

“ Few people who have studied the matter attentively but have arrived at the conclusion that those plants which we cultivate for their roots were not naturally endowed with the root portion of their structure either of the size or form which would now be considered as essential for a perfect crop plant. ”

“ The most prominent of these parts are root, stem, leaf, flower, fruit, and seed. Familiar plants differ wonderfully in size and shape,—from fragile mushrooms, delicate waterweeds and pond-scums, to floating leaves, soft grasses, coarse weeds, tall bushes, slender climbers, gigantic trees, and hanging moss.
The Stem Part.—In most plants there is a main central part or shaft on which the other or secondary parts are borne. This main part is the plant axis. Above ground, in most plants, the main plant axis bears the branches, leaves, and flowers; below ground, it bears the roots. ”

“ The flower-stem is more than 2 ft. high, and very much branched; the branches commencing at from 4 ins. to 8 ins. above the ground, and forming a large and exceedingly handsome panicle of flowers of a light-blue colour, tinged with the greyish hue of the numerous membranous bracts and thin dry calyces. A well-drained, sandy soil, in an open sunny position, is the best for this plant, which, however, grows in any ordinary garden-soil, and is admirably adapted for naturalisation or grouping with the acanthuses, tritomas, etc., the effect of the inflorescence being very remarkable. ”

“ Each of these two cells again breaks up into two more, and so the plant grows larger and larger, till by the time it has used up all the food in the seed-leaves, it has sent roots covered with fine hairs downwards into the earth, and a shoot with beginnings of leaves up into the air. ”

“ The foundation of a new plant consists equally of a stem and leaves, and the sole distinction is that the stem becomes intimately blended at its base with the mother plant in its growth, and has no free radical extremity like that exhibited by a plant developed from a seed. ”

“ If the ground in old-established botanic gardens be dug much deeper than ordinary, it frequently happens that species which have been long lost are recovered, from their seeds being latent in the soil, as I have been assured by Mr. Fairbairn of Chelsea garden, and others.
The integuments of the seed, having fulfilled their destined office of protection, burst and decay. The young root is the first part of the infant plant that comes forth, and by an unerring law of Nature it is sent downwards, to seek out nourishment as well as to fix the plant to the ground. ”

“ What a contrast to the average plant raised by the farmer—the seed often broadcasted, either in a hot bed or in a spot in the garden where the soil has not been specially prepared for plant raising, and when the plants, a large number of which are thin, pale green, and spindly looking, attain a height of anywhere from six inches to a foot they are all set out in the field and allowed to struggle along as best they can. ”

“ The topmost place of all in the hierarchy of seed life, it seems to me, is taken by the feathery fruits and seeds which float freely hither and thither wherever the wind may bear them. An immense number of the very highest plants—the aristocrats of the vegetable kingdom, such as the lordly composites, those ultimate products of plant evolution—possess such floating feathery seeds ”

“ When the plant is young, its chief object is to grow; it must acquire size and development, to enable it to produce and bear up the enormous crop it is destined one day to yield. Hence in the early years of a tree there is none, or very little of this transformation of the buds, which are all of the pointed character, and when excited into growth, they all produce shoots and leaves only, which result in the formation of an increase of the woody fabric, that we call the tree. ”