Neophyte

“ The domination of the sporophyte in this manner vastly increased the possibilities of evolutionary development, and when this plastic self-contained type of plant began to move out over the broad spaces of the world, all the ranges of temperature afforded by the earth's surface, as well as of moisture, illumination, concentration of the solutions in the soils, alkalinity, etc., were encountered to which to-day the manifold types of plants stand in a delicate adjustment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We do not aspire to a treatise on botany, but stop to consider only certain facts which are essential to this argument; a consideration of the higher plants will serve our purpose. Certain phytons are modified to become roots, which are the organs devoted to the absorption from the earth of the materials which are to be woven into the plant; other phytons become the stem for support; others the branches for expansion; others the leaves for respiration; others pistils and stamens for reproduction, while others become floral envelopes for their protection. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Intense xerophytes and hydrophytes are much more fixed than mesophytes, though the intensity of the stimulus has doubtless as great an influence as its duration. Composites, labiates, grasses, orchids, etc., are less plastic than ranals, rosals, etc., but there are many exceptions to the apparent rule that fixity increases with taxonomic complexity. ”

“ It was a noble work, but it is nearly past in the older parts of our country; and while some of that school should linger to readjust their genera, make new combinations of species, and attempt to satisfy the claims of priority, the rank and file will largely leave systematic botany and the herborizing it embraces, and betake themselves to the open fields of phytoecology. It may be along the line of structural adaptations when we will have morphological phytoecology, or the adjustment of function to the environment when there will be physiological phytoecology. ”

“ The gametophyte is always the independently living individual upon which the spore-bearing generation is throughout its life dependent. In all plants higher than the Bryophyta the sporophyte becomes an independently rooted plant and is the conspicuous stage in the life-history. ”

“ So far as the actual number of seeds produced is concerned, polyanthous plants may not differ from polyspermatous ones, but, as a rule, they are much more highly specialized for dissemination and are more mobile. The number of fertile seeds is also much greater, a fact which is of great importance in ecesis, and which, taken in connection with mobility, partially explains the supremacy of the composites. Among the fungi and algae, the amount of spore-production in a large degree determines the mobility, since these forms are intrinsically permobile. ”

“ In the modern world we divide all vegetation into two great series, that of the Flowering Plants (Phænogams) , which also produce true fruits and seeds, and that of the Flowerless Plants (Cryptogams) , which produce minute spores instead of seeds. The latter is in every respect the lower group. This lower series is again divisible into three classes—first and lowest, that of the Seaweeds, Moulds, and Lichens (Thallophytes) . Secondly, that of the Mosses and their allies (Anophytes) . Thirdly, that of the Ferns, Equisetums and Club-mosses (Acrogens) . ”

“ They have no true roots, and their structure is purely cellular or conducting bundles of a very simple structure are present. The independent plant which is generally attached to the soil by hair-like structures is the sexual generation, the sporophyte is a stalked or sessile capsule which remains always attached to the gametophyte from which it derives the whole or part of its nourishment. ”

“ But the tissues are too constant and too manifestly connected with each other to justify this last supposition. That the plant grew on land I cannot doubt, from its mode of occurrence; that it was of durable and resisting character is shown by its state of preservation; and the structure of the seeds called Pachytheca, with their constant association with these trees, give countenance to the belief that they are the fruit of Nematophyton. Of the foliage or fronds of these strange plants we unfortunately know nothing. ”

“ Adjustment to the habitat. The seedling once established by germination, the probability of its growing and maturing will depend upon its habitat form, plasticity, and vegetation form. Even though it may germinate under opposite conditions, a typical hylophyte, such as Impatiens for example, will not thrive in an open meadow, nor will characteristic poophytes, such as most grasses, grow in deep shade. In the same way, xerophytes do not adapt themselves to hydrophytic habitats, nor hydrophytes to xerophytic conditions. ”

“ The general rule followed by most polydemics is that sun species will give rise to shade forms, and vice versa, and that xerophytes will produce forms of hydrophytic tendency, or the converse, when the areas concerned are not too remote, and the water or light differences are efficient, but not inhibitive. ”

“ When this organic matter, which may be looked on as an universal seed, is collected in any great quantity, as in the seminal liquors, and in the mucilaginous parts of the infusion of plants, its first effect is to vegetate, or rather to produce vegetating beings. These zoophytes swell, extend, ramify, and produce globules, ovals, and other small bodies, of different figures, which have all a kind of animal life, a progressive motion, which is often very swift, and sometimes very slow. ”

“ The ultimate ramifications of roots of trees 100 years old and the suction roots of year-old seedlings are woven by the mycelial filaments in precisely the same manner.' It is stated that many plants only flourish in symbiotic community, and in this fact lies the explanation of the readiness of some plants to grow and flourish from cuttings put in sand, or from seedlings grown in nutritive solutions, while others, in the absence of the necessary fungi encircling their roots, cannot be made to strike root or flourish in this way. ”

“ Speaking generally, the simpler plants propagate both sexually and asexually; and, speaking comparatively, the complex plants propagate only sexually: their asexual propagation is usually incomplete—produces a united aggregate of individuals instead of numerous distinct individuals. The Protophytes that perpetually subdivide, the merely [463] cellular Algæ that shed their tetraspores, the Archegoniates that spontaneously separate their fronds or drop their gemmæ, show us an extra mode of multiplication which, among flowering plants, is exceptional. ”

“ But the blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones, becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every respect—in bulk, in structure, in colour, in form, in chemical composition: differs so greatly that no visible resemblance of any kind can be pointed out between them. Yet is the one changed in the course of a few years into the other: ”

“ After commenting on these purely imaginary causes, I pointed out in 1832, as the two great flaws in Lamarck's attempt to explain the origin of species, first, that he had failed to adduce a single instance of the initiation of a new organ in any species of animal or plant; and secondly, that variation, whether taking place in the course of nature or assisted artificially by the breeder and horticulturist, had never yet gone so far as to produce two races sufficiently remote from each other in physiological constitution as to be sterile when intermarried, or, if fertile, only capable of producing sterile hybrids, &c. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the existing Fauna and Flora is but the last term of a long series of equally numerous contemporary species, which have succeeded one another, by the slow and gradual substitution of species for species, in the vast interval of time which has elapsed between the deposition of the earliest fossiliferous strata and the present day. ”

“ Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed—a, to me, equally mysterious origin for it. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders. ”

“ But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record. ”

“ All the books and instructions insist that the selection of the soil is the most important part of gardening. No doubt it is. But, if a man has already selected his own backyard before he opens the book, what remedy is there? All the books lay stress on the need of “a deep, friable loam full of nitrogen.” This I have never seen. My own plot of land I found on examination to contain nothing but earth. I could see no trace of nitrogen. I do not deny the existence of loam. There may be such a thing. But I am admitting now in all humility of mind that I don’t know what loam is. ”

“ But I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a row of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green. ”

“ Sometimes, as in the case of peach and plum trees, which are often dwarfed, the plants are thrown into a flowering state, and then, [Pg 98] as they flower freely year after year, they have little inclination to make vigorous growth. ”

“ From the time of Linnæus to the commencement of the present century, it seemed a sufficient definition of the term species to say, that 'a species consisted of individuals all resembling each other, and reproducing their like by generation.' But Lamarck, after having first studied botany with success, had then turned his attention to conchology, and soon became aware that in the newer (or tertiary) ”

“ when it is older, it has filaments and fibres like hemp and flax. Nettle cloth is as good as linen cloth. Chopped up, nettles are good for poultry; pounded, they are good for horned cattle. The seed of the nettle, mixed with fodder, gives gloss to the hair of animals; the root, mixed with salt, produces a beautiful yellow coloring-matter. Moreover, it is an excellent hay, which can be cut twice. And what is required for the nettle? A little soil, no care, no culture. Only the seed falls as it is ripe, and it is difficult to collect it. That is all. ”

“ The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant's existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are not merely differentiated; they supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. ”

“ When we compare the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which strikes us is, that they generally differ more from each other than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature. And if we reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have been cultivated, and which have varied during all ages under the most different climates and treatment, we are driven to conclude that this great variability is due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from, those to which the parent species had been exposed under nature. ”