Scale (botany)

“ The buds are long and tapering, the scales thin and scarious, the outer naked, the inner with long, silky hairs. Remove the scales one by one, as in Lilac. The outer four or six pairs are so minute that the arrangement is not very clear, but as we proceed we perceive that the scales are in alternate pairs, as in Horsechestnut; that is, that two scales are exactly on the same plane. But we have learned in the Lilac that the scales are modified leaves, and follow the leaf-arrangement of the species. The Beech is alternate-leaved, and we should therefore expect the scales to alternate. ”

“ In these the axis remains short, nearly as it is in the bud; the leaves therefore remain close together in sets or circles; the outer ones, those of the calyx, generally partake more or less of the character of foliage; the next set are more delicate, and form the corolla, while the rest, the stamens and pistils, appear under forms very different from those of ordinary leaves, and are concerned in the production of seed. This view gives to Botany an interest which one who merely notices the shape and counts the parts of blossoms, without understanding their plan, has no conception of. ”

“ One or more of the upper scales, except sometimes the terminal ones, contains in the axil a flower, which is usually enclosed by a bract-like awnless organ called the palet, placed opposite the scale and with its back toward the axis (rachilla) of the spikelet, generally 2-keeled; sometimes the palet is present without the flower, and vice versa. Flowers perfect, pistillate, or staminate, sometimes monoecious or dioecious, subtended by 1-3 minute hyaline scales called the lodicules. ”

“ The other Way of varying the Proportion of Seed in the same Boxes, is by the Diameter of the Wheels, when we can alter them; for Wheels, of what Diameter soever they are, must turn round all the Notches at one Revolution; so that Wheels of Twenty Inches Diameter will deliver out a third Part more Seed than Wheels of Thirty Inches Diameter, into the same Length of the Chanels; but we seldom have any Occasion to alter the Wheels, unless it be on account of planting a Species of Seed of a different Magnitude, as the largest Sort of Peas, and small-grain’d Wheat, or St. Foin Seed are. ”

“ The seeds are always seen to be lying quite openly on the upper side of the scales, and are not covered in by closed carpels as they are in the flowering plants. Each of the scales (which bears its two seeds) corresponds in a way to the carpel in a flower, but there is an important difference in the fact that it leaves the seeds open. In old pine cones there seems to be only one scale to each pair of seeds, but there is really a second smaller one outside it—which is sometimes quite difficult to see. ”

“ The tubular flowers compose the disk; and a head which has no ray-flowers is said to be discoid. When the head contains two sorts of flowers it is said to be heterogamous; when only one sort, homogamous. The leaves of the involucre, of whatever form or texture, are termed scales. The bracts or scales, which often grow on the receptacle among the flowers, are called the chaff; when these are wanting, the receptacle is said to be naked.—The largest order of Phænogamous plants. ”

“ They form large, dark green, felted masses, and are sometimes known as “green felts.” Some species grow also on the wet ground about springs. An examination of one of the masses shows it to be made up of closely matted, hair-like threads, each of which is an individual plant.
In transferring the plants to the slide for microscopic examination, they must be handled very carefully, as they are very easily injured. Each thread is a long tube, branching sometimes, but not divided into cells as in Spirogyra or Cladophora. ”

“ In this Natural Order, we find fruits and seeds, of very different sizes as well as shapes, but fortunately they are so similar in species of the same genus, that a gardener who is not learned in botany, after having seen one of each, may have a tolerable guess, at the genus of any new ones, he receives from abroad. In sowing them, much must be left to the discretion of the gardener; generally they ought not to be buried deeper than half an inch in the earth, nor closer to each other, than from a quarter of an inch to an inch, according to their size ”

“ The next question was, why gravitation makes the roots and stems take exactly opposite directions, why, that is, in a plant placed in a horizontal direction, the root-end curves downwards and the stem upwards. Knight supposed that the root, being of a semi-fluid consistence, is bent downwards by its own weight, while the nutrient sap in the stem moves to the underside and causes stronger growth there, until by means of the curvature so produced the stem assumes the upright position. ”

“ THE CELL.
If we make a thin slice across the stem of a rapidly growing plant,—e.g. geranium, begonia, celery,—mount it in water, and examine it microscopically, it will be found to be made up of numerous cavities or chambers separated by delicate partitions. Often these cavities are of sufficient size to be visible to the naked eye, and examined with a hand lens the section appears like a piece of fine lace, each mesh being one of the chambers visible when more strongly magnified. These chambers are known as “cells,” and of them the whole plant is built up. ”

“ A system of phytons constitutes the higher plants. In the history of plant life the morphology of plant phytons is an important part of the science of botany, for the forms of phytons undergo a succession of changes, the investigation of which vies in importance with that of the chemical development of kinds to which we have heretofore alluded. ”

“ The hairs of plants are cells formed on the surface; either elongated single cells (like the root-hairs of Fig. 441, 442) , or a row of shorter cells. Cotton fibres are long and simple cells growing from the surface of the seed.
404. The size of the cells of which common plants are made up varies from about the thirtieth to the thousandth of an inch in diameter. An ordinary size of short or roundish cells is from 1/300 to 1/500 of an inch; so that there may generally be from 27 to 125 millions of cells in the compass of a cubic inch! ”

“ The great skill shown by the founders of the doctrine in the morphological consideration of the whole plant-form appears equally in the establishment of the rules, according to which the relations of position of the leaves of a side-shoot connect with those of the mother-axis, and which made it possible to represent the nature of inflorescences especially with extreme clearness by means of geometrical figures. ”

“ The roots of air-plants, such as certain orchids, draw their nourishment from the air.
The experiment of marking roots and stem has been already tried, but it should be repeated. Repetition of experiments is always desirable, as it fixes his conclusions in the pupil's mind. The stem grows by a succession of similar parts, phytomera, each part, or phyton, consisting of node, internode, and leaf. Thus it follows that stems must bear leaves. The marked stems of seedlings show greater growth towards the top of the growing phyton. It is only young stems that elongate throughout. ”

“ Each leaf is traversed by two fibro-vascular bundles of entirely different structure from those of the ferns. Each is divided into two nearly equal parts, the wood (x) lying toward the inner, flat side of the leaf, the bast (T) toward the outer, convex side. This type of bundle, called “collateral,” is the common form found in the stems and leaves of seed plants. The cells of the wood or xylem are rather larger than those of the bast or phloem, and have thicker walls than any of the phloem cells, except the outermost ones which are thick-walled fibres like those under the epidermis. ”

“ Sepals oblong, spreading. Petals thread-like or linear, spreading. Lip auricled or ovate at base, not tubercled, entire or nearly so. Column very small, terete, with 2 teeth or auricles at the summit and the erect anther between them. Pollen-masses 4, in one row (2 in each cell) , cohering by pairs at the apex, waxy, without any stalks, threads, or gland.—Low herbs, from solid bulbs, producing simple stems, which bear in our species a single leaf and a raceme of minute greenish flowers. (Name composed of μικρός, small, and στυλίς, a column or style.) ”

“ He begins by distinguishing Herbs, Shrubs, and Trees. Proceeding to the detailed classification of Herbs, he divides them into Imperfect "which either do want or seem to want some of the more essential parts of Plants, viz. either Root, Stalk, or Seed," the Cryptogamia of Linnaeus; and Perfect "having all the essential parts belonging to a Plant." The Perfect Herbs are arranged in three main groups according to (1) their leaves, (2) their flowers, (3) their seed-vessel, each group being subdivided in various ways. ”

“ In fine, from all the genera and species of plants that have been detected in the strata of the coal-measures, it would appear that the flora of that ancient period was in a high degree acrogenous—that is to say, consisted in great measure of ferns, club-mosses, and other members of the great group of plants known as acrogens. This word literally means top-growers, and is applied to those plants which increase in height, but not in width, since they attain at first nearly their ultimate diameter. Such plants occupy a low position in the botanical scale. ”

“ Now this uncertainty is of little moment, when we have them primarily distinguished and set apart from other plants by their Monoecious or Dioecious character; because the genera being few, and the Orders constructed widely as to number of Stamens, we find little difficulty in determining any genus, which would be by no means the case if we had them confounded with the mass of the system. Even the species of the same genus, as well as individuals of each species, differ among themselves. ”

“ Flowers occur in racemes two feet or more in length. The fruit is spherical and about a third of an inch in diameter. The roots are an important part of this palm, and are adapted to their environment, forming a rounded mass four or five feet in diameter, while small rope-like roots, half an inch in diameter, penetrate the wet marshy soil fifteen or twenty feet. The large, globe-like mass gives support in the soft soil, and the stringy roots supply water and mineral substances essential to growth. ”

“ When there is a general reduction in size throughout all the organs of a plant, or throughout all the nutritive organs, stem, leaves, &c., and the several portions participate in this diminished size, we have what are generally termed "dwarf varieties," dwarf in comparison, that is, with the ordinary condition of the plants; on the other hand, if the entire plant, or, at least, if the [Pg 414] whole of one set of organs be increased in size beyond the recognised average, we have large varieties, often qualified by such terms as macrophylla, longifolia, macrantha, &c. ”

“ Roots are not always of this common type. Sometimes, particularly in certain biennials, they are swelled to form great thickened portions, often weighing many pounds. The sweet potato is a familiar example, and a related plant, one of our morning-glories, has an enormous perennial root, known to weigh as much as fifty pounds. This swelling of the roots of plants is a quite common characteristic of certain kinds and has great commercial significance. ”

“ The whole seed of some plants is so small that it can be lifted bodily by the wind, for instance Rhododendrons and many other heaths, one of the hanging pitcher plants of tropical Asia, many orchid seeds, and of hundreds of other plants. Many of these are less than one ten-thousandth of a gram in weight and, with dust and the spores of nearly all cryptogams, may be transported thousands of miles. ”

“ The segments divide by vertical walls in various directions so that the young plant rapidly assumes the form of a flat plate of cells attached to the ground by root hairs developed from the lower surfaces of the cells, and sometimes from the marginal ones. As the division walls are all vertical, the plant is nowhere more than one cell thick. ”

“ With all the species in which the grains differ in diameter, there is no exception to the rule that those from the anthers of the short-styled form, the tubes of which have to penetrate the longer pistil of the long-styled form, are larger than the grains from the other form. This curious relation led Delpino (as it formerly did me) to believe that the larger size of the grains in the short-styled flowers is connected with the greater supply of matter needed for the development of their longer tubes. ”

“ While Cesalpino, Kaspar Bauhin, and Jung stand as solitary forms each in his own generation, the last thirty years of the 17th century are marked by the stirring activity of a number of contemporary botanists. While during this period physics were making rapid advances in the hands of Newton, philosophy in those of Locke and Leibnitz, and the anatomy and physiology of plants by the labours of Malpighi and Grew, systematic botany was also being developed, though by no means to the same extent or with equally profound results, by Morison, Ray, Bachmann (Rivinus) , and Tournefort. ”