Leaf

“ Most of the seeds are ripe and away, those of the trees mottling the sunny air, glinting, glancing through the midst of the merry insect people, rocks and trees, everything alike drenched in gold light, heaven’s colors coming down to the meadows and groves, making every leaf a romance, air, earth, and water in peace beyond thought, the great brooding days opening and closing in divine psalms of color. ”

“ The flower itself consists of one leaf of the funnel-fashioned kind, spreads, and, when in its full perfection, folds back at the lips, though it has in some flowers marks or depressions which might appear like segments, yet they are not such, but merely accidental, and the edge of most of the flowers perfectly even, without any mark of separation. ”

“ Almost every body says when looking at a handsome plant or tree, how beautiful it is! But you will say something more than this. You will say how beautiful and how wonderful too! You think of the sap going up and down in the pipes, of the busy mouths in the roots drinking it up from the ground, of the many different things that are made from the sap, of the beautiful leaves acting as the lungs of the plant, and of the leaf-buds from which the leaves are made. ”

“ Almost every single one is fastened to the tree so as to get its fair share of sunshine.
When you think of the many thousands of leaves borne by one tree, it astonishes you to see how seldom one leaf gets in another’s light. ”

“ Flowers are the most exquisitely delicate in their texture of all forms in the vegetable kingdom. Look at the petals of this one. Could anything be softer or finer? The leaf, the bark, and the wood of the plant are all coarse, in comparison to the flower. Now, as nothing is made in vain, there must be some reason for this. The leaves and bark, as well as wood, of plants, all have vessels through which sap flows, and this sap nourishes, sustains, and builds up the plant, as our blood does our bodies. But the whole effort of the plant is to reproduce itself ”

“ As explained in the section on Inflorescence, flowers arise from the same places as branches, and from no other; flower-buds, like leaf-buds, appear either on the summit of a stem, that is, as a terminal bud, or in the axil of a leaf, as an axillary bud. And, as the plan of a symmetrical flower shows, the arrangement of the parts on their axis or receptacle is that of leaves upon the stem.
245. That the sepals and petals are of the nature of leaves is evident from their appearance; they are commonly called the leaves of the flower. ”

“ But in the leaf is the strength of the tree itself. Nay, rightly speaking, the leaves are the tree itself. Its trunk sustains; its fruit burdens and exhausts; but in the leaf it breathes and lives. And thus also, in the eastern symbolism, the fruit is the labour of men for others; but the leaf is their own life. "He shall bring forth fruit, in his time; and his own joy and strength shall be continual."
3. Notice next the word 'folium.' In Greek, φυλλον, 'phyllon.'
"The thing that is born," or "put forth." "When the branch is tender, and putteth forth her leaves, ye know that summer is nigh." ”

“ The leaf is as much beyond our comprehension of remote causes, as much a subject of intelligent admiration, as the tree which bears it: the single tree confounds our knowledge and researches the same as the entire forest ”

“ No one can become familiar with leaves, and appreciate their beauty and variety, who does not study them upon the plants themselves. This chapter therefore will be devoted mainly to the words needed for leaf description, together with their application.
The Leaf.—In the axil of the whole leaf the bud forms for the growth of a new branch. So by noting the position of the buds, all the parts included in a single leaf can be determined. As a general thing the leaf has but one blade, as in the Chestnut, Apple, Elm, etc. ”

“ The leaf may fall and not be missed from the bough ; the branch may be rudely broken off, and its absence not marked; the tree will die and be succeeded by other trees in the forest, green with summer beauty, or foodful and prophetic with autumnal seed. Tree by tree, the woods will pass away, and, unobserved, another forest take its place,—arising, also, tree by tree. ”

“ The shadows of leaves fall upon their arms, as they spread the branches apart, but their shoulders are in the sun. The skin of their arms is like a blue mist, but their shoulders are white and glowing, as if the light fell not from above, but rose from under their skin. We watch the leaf which has fallen upon their shoulder, and it lies at the curve of their neck, and a drop of dew glistens upon it like a jewel. ”

“ And the student will readily understand that by leaf in its largest or morphological sense, the botanist means the organ which occupies the place of a leaf, whatever be its form or its function.
§ 1. LEAVES AS FOLIAGE.
121. This is tautological; for foliage is simply leaves: but it is very convenient to speak of typical leaves, or those which serve the plant for assimilation, as foliage-leaves, or ordinary leaves. These may first be considered.
122. The Parts of a Leaf. The ordinary leaf, complete in its parts, consists of blade, foot-stalk, or petiole, and a pair of stipules. ”

“ Opposite each other, making a cross, are four leaves, like a carnation leaf at first, but broadening and lengthening till it is two inches at the base and eight or ten long. Rising out of the axil of each leaf are buds, of graduated size and development up to the open [Pg 55] blossom. That one stem, therefore, is prepared to open fresh flowers every day for a long time.
The plant is exquisitely beautiful, for the whole thing, from the stem to the flower petals, is of a delicate, light pea-green. The blossom opens like a star, with four stamens and four petals. ”

“ And the flamboyant leaf mouldings are beautiful, because they nestle and run up the hollows, and fill the angles, and clasp the shafts which natural leaves would have delighted to fill and to clasp. They are no mere cast of natural leaves ”

“ In fact, a leaf is a layer of the precious cambium spread out on a framework of veins and covered [Pg 18] with a delicate, transparent skin—a sort of etherealized bark. What a vast quantity of leaf pulp is in the foliage of a large tree!
As summer wanes, and the upward tide of sap begins to fail, starch making in the leaf laboratories declines proportionately. Usually before midsummer the fresh green is dimmed. Dust and heat and insect injuries impair the leaf's capacity for work. The thrifty tree undertakes to withdraw the leaf pulp before winter comes. ”

“ But the most remarkable form of leaf is the fan-shaped, which characterizes a considerable number of species, and gives them such a completely different aspect, as to render it, to ordinary observers, the most palpable feature dividing the whole family into two distinct groups. ”

“ With every leaf a miracle: and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-coloured blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig, with its flower, I break. ”

“ One only leaf upon the top of a tree—the sole remaining leaf—danced round and round like a rag blown by the wind. ”

“ Leaves involute, entire and persistent in American species; stipules inclosing the leaf in a slender sharp-pointed bud-like cover, interpetiolar, embracing the leaf-bearing axis and inclosing the young leaves, deciduous. ”

“ Slow buds the pink dawn like a rose
From out night's gray and cloudy sheath;
Softly and still it grows and grows,
Petal by petal, leaf by leaf; ”

“ Because it is so overwhelmingly a characteristic of leaves and, as we have seen, leaves are the one organ of the plant upon which man pins his only hope of future food supply, the leaves of all plants may be truly likened to a factory the work of which is never ending, the product of which the leaf will never use, but the result of which has far-reaching consequences to us all. ”

“ The very forest and herbage, the pellicle of the earth, must acquire a bright color, an evidence of its ripeness, as if the globe itself were a fruit on its stem, with ever a cheek toward the sun.
Flowers are but colored leaves, fruits but ripe ones. The edible part of most fruits is, as the physiologist says, "the parenchyma or fleshy tissue of the leaf," of which they are formed. ”

“ Davy laughed, and the Chief Gardener laughed with him.
SOME SIMPLE LEAVES
"But you are right, Prue, in one way," he said. "There are just two kinds of leaves—simple and compound. A simple leaf is a leaf of just one blade, like a grass leaf, or the leaf of a morning-glory. A compound leaf is a leaf made up of several blades, like a bean leaf, which you know is divided into three parts. ”

“ A leaf.—The leaves of different plants vary much in size and shape, but in general a leaf is a thin, broad, and more or less oval blade of green colour, attached by a leaf stalk to the stem or branch. ”

“ When full grown, the leaves are seven or eight feet long and a foot and a half broad. The stem of the leaf is as big as a man's arm. The fruit-stem shoots out at the top of the full-grown tree,—first blossoming, and then bearing. ”

“ Note that the leaf-blade expands horizontally,—that is, normally presents its faces one to the sky, the other to the ground, or when the leaf is erect the upper face looks toward the stem that bears it, the lower face away from it. ”

“ Down in the earth the roots are taking in nourishment, and up in the air the little green leaves are also busy supplying food to the growing plant. The little growing tip lengthens into a stem from which a leaf is seen unfolding. This new leaf is not shaped like the embryo-leaves nor like the seed-leaves. ”

“ The peak of the bill and the eyes are plainly to be seen and a small leaf before the flower arrives at maturity forms the outspread tail. The leaf can be raised or shut down with the finger without breaking or apparently injuring it until the flower reaches its bloom, when it drops,"--Panama Star. ”

“ The subject of leaf-arrangement is an extremely difficult one, and it is best, even with the older pupils, to touch it lightly. The point to be especially brought out is the disposition of the leaves so that each can get the benefit of the light. This can be seen in any plant and there are many ways in which the desired result is brought about. The chief way is the distribution of the leaves about the stem, and this is well studied from the leaf-scars. ”

“ How to Tell a Leaf.—It is often difficult to distinguish compound leaves from leafy branches, and leaflets [78] from leaves. As a rule leaves can be distinguished by the following tests: (1) Leaves are temporary structures, sooner or later falling. (2) Usually buds are borne in their axils. (3) Leaves are usually borne at joints or nodes. (4) They arise on wood of the current year’s growth. (5) They have a more or less definite arrangement. When leaves fall, the twig that bore them remains; when leaflets fall, the main petiole or stalk that bore them also falls.
Fig. ”

“ The tree grows to a good height. The leaves, heart-shape, are thick and about the color of the under part of a silver-maple leaf, except that they are very rough, which prevents them from glistening like the maple. ”

“ Many oak trees have the same habit of leaf variation, so that even a forester has to examine many leaves with care, and with them the buds and the acorns, to make sure that he has called the oak by its right name. ”

“ If you study the leaf more carefully you will discover that the veins in the leaf will quite closely resemble the shape of the limbs of the tree. You would not be able to study the different leaves which you pick up without being impressed with the resemblance in many instances between the leaf and the tree upon which it grew. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ A leaf is that which is extended from its point of origin in height, or in length and breadth, in such a manner, that the bounding surfaces of the third dimension are different from one another, and therefore the outer and inner surfaces of the leaf are differently organised. ”

“ Flowers, the green leaves and the grass, are suggestive of two kinds of pathos. The individual flower, the grass or leaf of any one day or spring-tide, becomes the type of the transitoriness of beauty and youth and life. ”

“ Plants in their perfect form consist of four principal parts,—the Root, Stem, Leaf, and Flower. It is true that the stem and flower are parts, or remnants, or altered states, of the leaves; and that, speaking with close accuracy, we might say, a perfect plant consists of leaf and root. ”

“ Yes, your leaf is peculiar, and some would make of you a distinct variety, but to me you appear like the puny result of an accident and misfortune, for you have lost your main shoot, and the leaves which would have grown runcinate are small and lanceolate. ”

“ In talking the subject over with friends, I have found a widely prevalent idea that the beauty and variety of leaves are a beneficent arrangement made specially with reference to the enjoyment and delight of man. I have, again, frequently been met by the opinion that there is some special form, size, and texture of leaf inherently characteristic of each species ”