Plant sap

“ Let us fix our attention on a single plant. It has a certain amount of root pasturage and space in which to grow. Since it is not permitted to produce an indefinite number of young plants, it begins to develop itself. The soil is rich, the roots are busy, and there must be an outlet. The original plant cannot form others, and therefore begins to produce fruit-crowns for the coming year. All the sap, all the increasing power of root and foliage, are directed to preparation for fruit. ”

“ All that goes from the roots to the leaves is called sap. This, when it comes to the leaves and all parts of the plant exposed to the light, transpires, and so keeps the plant cool.
The stem, on which the supreme work, the flower, will be born, is, in the case of our Carnations, divided into nodes and internodes, the nodes being those solid elbows one sees. It is towards the supreme work that our eyes are turned. It is part, if not chief part, of the pleasure of our vigil to look forward to the day when the first faint colour shows in the bursting bud. ”

“ This shape is far from being unimportant; it is, on the contrary, very important, since the circulation of the sap and the distribution of the sun’s rays, essential conditions to plant-life, are strictly dependent on it. If the tree is left free to develop by itself and to take its natural form, the sap from the roots will, under the impetus of its ascent, always seek by preference the highest points, where growth will in consequence proceed with vigor, [118] while the lower parts will languish and die out for want of sufficient nourishment. ”

“ Now that it is fit for plant food, the sap sets out to run through all the plant. It must go to every part to build all up.
There are not two sets of tubes, one for raw and one for cooked sap. All must run through the same cells. So you see, the sap will be mixed. The raw sap going up has some food sap in it. The food sap runs about with some raw sap mixed with it.
Yet, after all, each kind reaches the right place. All the raw sap is cooked, all the food sap builds the plant. Here it builds root, there leaf, there stem, there flower, or seed. ”

“ This fact will suggest the proper course with reference to the leaves, tops, vines, haulm, and other vegetable refuse of the garden.
The other fact connected with the leaf, is its function of Exhalation. The greatest proportion of crude sap which ascends the trunk, upon reaching the leaf, is given forth again to the atmosphere, by means of a particularly beautiful economy. The quantity of moisture produced by a plant is hardly dreamed of by those who have not specially informed themselves. ”

“ Into this the sap continually oozes, and it is removed twice, sometimes thrice a day by a peon, who sucks it into his mouth and then ejects it into the jar he carries on his back. As soon as the plant exhausts all this sap, which was originally intended to give strength and life to the flowering stem, it dies, and is replaced by innumerable suckers from the old root. Great care must be exercised in cutting the plant—if the least too soon or too late, it is the death of it. ”

“ Every spring you may see on the heads of this plant beautiful flowers produced, which are destined in the course of another week to be only flowerless foot-stalks. The flowers break off at a pre-existing joint, just as leaves are shed. The influence which causes them to fall is inability to attract sap, in consequence of inability to proceed to the further stage of producing fruit. The young tubers underground make such overpowering demands upon the sap-furnishing capabilities of the roots that the flowers cannot obtain sufficient for their seed forming. ”

“ The crude sap, bearing in solution the various organic matters which the roots have extracted from the soil, ascends by the outer layer of wood immediately beneath the bark to the leaves, where it is elaborated into plant food. ”

“ Therefore, though the sap rises and descends in the plant, it does not appear to undergo a real circulation.
The last of the organs of plants is the flower, or blossom, which produces the fruits and seed. These may be considered as the ultimate purpose of nature in the vegetable creation. From fruits and seeds animals derive both a plentiful source of immediate nourishment, and an ample provision for the reproduction of the same means of subsistence. ”

“ When the buds are ready to burst, and the green leaves begin to show themselves beneath their scaly covering, the ground has become drier, the absorption by the roots is diminished, and the sap, being immediately employed in the formation of the foliage, can be extracted from the stem in only small quantities. ”

“ As wood grows older it grows darker, particularly in the center of the stem or heart. This darkening is due to the deposit within the fibers; and when a tree reaches maturity the fibers are so filled as no longer to join in the general circulation. Now, this inner or heart wood is less liable to decay than the outer or sap wood, and sap, as is well known, is the agent of destruction. Sap is water with sugary, saline, albuminous, mucilaginous, and gummy matters dissolved in it, and such solutions ferment easily and rapidly. ”

“ The elaborated sap is formed out of the ascending sap. The place where this change takes place is in the leaves and green parts of vegetables; it is generally in the spring season that the ascending sap pushes out the buds into branches, and developes the little scales which had surrounded these organs into leaves; but when these leaves are formed, the sap continues to ascend into them, and there undergoes those alterations from whence the elaborated sap results. ”

“ We can now have a general idea how the nutritious sap, acted upon by all the agents above mentioned during its stay in the cellular substance of the leaf, and returned from thence impregnated with them into the bark, may prove the source of increase, and of peculiar secretions, in the vegetable frame. That portion of sap sent to the flower and fruit undergoes no less remarkable changes, for purposes to which those curious organs are devoted; nor is it returned from thence, as from the leaves, to answer any further end. ”

“ The water rises from the roots through the sapwood to the leaves, where it is converted into true "sap" which descends through the bark and feeds the living tissues between the bark and the wood, which tissues make the annual growth of the trunk. ”

“ The sap in the tree descends through the bark, and except in early spring is not present in the wood of the tree except in the medullary rays and living tissues in the "sapwood."
What flows through the "sapwood" is chiefly water brought from the soil. It is not pure water, but contains many substances in solution, such as mineral salts, and in certain species—maple, birch, etc., it also contains at certain times a small percentage of sugar and other organic matter. ”

“ This occurs naturally in all trees, because they develop themselves in the forms natural to them, but in our gardens and orchards we make our trees assume unnatural forms. The sap flows to the highest parts by a law which is well known, though not so well understood; as a consequence, the lower branches do not receive their needed supplies, and being smothered by those above them, they eventually die and decay, leaving a naked stem supporting a top, or the common form of the natural tree. ”

“ Why are some clothed with leaves when the others are scarcely budding? Wherefore, in certain genera, do the flowers appear before the leaves?
Some authorities assert,—but facts show it to be a purely gratuitous supposition,—that the flower, which, with the fruit, seems to be the goal or object of vegetation, demands a greater activity on the part of the sap. But, in truth, many trees and shrubs, such as the poplar, the willow, and the hazel, flourish at an epoch when the sap is barely aroused from its protracted lethargy. ”

“ OF THE SAP, AND INSENSIBLE PERSPIRATION.
The sap of trees, as has been mentioned in the last chapter, may be obtained by wounding a stem or branch in spring, just before the buds open, or in the end of autumn, though less copiously, after a slight frost; yet not during the frost. In the Palm-trees of hot countries, it is said to flow from a wound at any time of the year. It has always been observed to flow from the young wood or alburnum of our trees, not from the bark ”

“ Being surrounded, however, by sap, like a seed in moist earth, it is in a proper situation for growing; the influence of the sun sets in motion the juices of the bud and of the seed, and the first operation in both of them is to send down roots a certain depth into the ground for the purpose of obtaining the necessary moisture. ”

“ Among the phenomena of vegetation in woody plants, there is scarcely one so striking as the outflow of watery sap from wounded vines and from some tree-stems in the spring. This phenomenon, like the outflow of milky juice, gum, resin and the like, could not fail to be regarded with lively interest by those who occupied themselves with vegetable physiology in the 17th century. ”

“ If a tree be cut into or tapped in some of the upright branches near the top very early in the spring, and be again tapped just below the branches on the trunk, and again just above the surface of the ground, it will be found that the sap will flow from the wound that is nearest to the top first, from the one just below the branches next, and last of all from the one near the ground. The reason for this is, that the light and warmth tell first upon the excitable buds at the extremities of the tree, and therefore the sap is set into an accelerated motion that lies nearest to them. ”

“ It grows well in ordinary well-drained soil, preferring that which is mellow, deep, and moist. Easily multiplied by sowing the seed as soon as it ripens, in light, peaty, sandy soil. In our winters it would be advisable to cover the plants with litter, as it is the dampness and sudden changes of the atmosphere which appear to injure it rather than the cold. Being a fine-flowering plant, as well as remarkable for its leaves, it is excellent for every kind of mixed border, and also for grouping with the smaller and medium-sized perennials that have fine foliage or are singular in appearance. ”

“ The next thing to do was to get some sap to boil into candy. What is sap? It is the juice of a tree. When the warm spring sunshine melts the snow, the roots of the tree drink in the moisture of the earth. This goes up into the tree, and makes sap. The sap within the tree, and the sunshine without, make the buds swell, and the bright fresh leaves come out.
For making sugar the sap of the maple-tree is used. But how is the sap got from the trees? and how is it made into sugar? I will tell you. [126] A hole is bored in each tree, a spout put in the hole, and a bucket is placed underneath. ”

“ In the first place, the sun warms the ground in which the seed lies buried. Then the seed swells and bursts, and sends downward a little root; the root drinks in the water from the soil, and so gets larger, and spreads around; and by-and-by it sends up a stem above the ground. As soon as the sunlight falls on the little plant, it gets stronger, and is able to take food as well as drink from the soil, so as to get its full shape and size and green color. ”

“ It loves moisture rather than rich elemental food. In clay it finds the best constituents of its development—moisture, silex, lime and alumnia. So we say to those who love this queenly flower, if you would see the queen in all her glory, plant in a comparatively heavy soil, no manure, and reduce the stalks to one for each tuber, set the stakes firmly, to keep the stalks from swaying, and if the season is dry, give the bulbs a soaking with water every evening during the drought. ”

“ When the plants are fairly started in their growth, the planter tops and primes them, processes performed, the first by pinching off the top bud, which would else run to seed, and the second by removing the lower leaves of each plant, leaving bare a space of some inches near the ground, and retaining from six to a dozen stout, well-formed leaves on each stem, according to the promise of the soil and season, and these leaves form the crop. ”

“ Soon the little roots acquire the power to take their nourishment from the earth in which they are imbedded. They absorb moisture and the materials in solution, which rise through the latest formed wood as ascending sap, and in the cells of the growing parts, especially the leaves, undergo the transformations which convert inorganic into organic substances. Hales [4] calculated that the force which impels the sap in a grapevine in summer time is five times as great as that which drives the blood through the arteries of a horse.
SECTION OF AN ENDOGENOUS STEM.
Much of the water is evaporated. ”

“ Anise, balm, basil, borage, caraway, catnip, coriander, dill, fennel, horehound, hop, hyssop, lavender, pot marigold, sweet and pot marjoram, parsley, pennyroyal, rosemary, rue, sage, savoury, tansy, sorrel, thyme, and wormwood. It would be of little use to plant all of these, even to see what the plants were like. I would suggest your trying lavender, sage, savoury, and dill.
"Lavender seed is very slow to germinate, so sow the seed plentifully in early spring. The soil should have a dusting of lime over it as lavender plants enjoy lime. The flower is the part you wish. ”