Vegetable life

“ ORCHIDS OR AIR PLANTS.
It is not easy at all times to say where vegetable life ends, and animal life begins; and were we required to determine the line of separation between merely organic and sentient life, by the distinctive forms of each, the recently discovered forms of vegetable life would greatly increase the difficulty. Resemblances to external forms of animal life exist in several portions of the vegetable world, but they abound in Orchidaceous plants, the latest, rarest, richest, and most beautiful addition to our floral treasures. ”

“ Vegetable life began to appear in the greenswards, the blossoms came in profusion, birds were singing and nesting, vegetables grew to early perfection, and the good housewives were careful to stow away the winter apparel with safeguards against moths and other destructive insects. ”

“ We speak of vegetable life as well as of animal life, for I am sure you have not forgotten that plants breathe through their leaves—they drink in water by their roots, and some plants even show that they are sensitive to touch by shrinking if anything comes in contact with them; but how a daisy, with its hardy little stem and its fresh green leaves and "crimson-tipped" flower, comes to grow out of the earth, we do not know at all. ”

“ It may therefore suffice, that, although the science of vegetable physiology admits of many very beautiful and instructing illustrations, yet they only go so far as to prove to us, that the first and grand principle of vegetable life and existence, as well as of the formation of all organic substances, consists in a system of attraction and combination of the different particles of nature, as they exist and are imbibed from the soil and the surrounding atmosphere. ”

“ The simplest developments of vegetable life are the formation of confervæ upon water, and of lichens upon the surface of the rock. In chemical constitution, these present no very remarkable differences from the cultivated flower which adorns our garden, or the tree which has risen in its pride amidst the changing seasons of many centuries. ”

“ So scanty was the stock of knowledge which the founders of vegetable physiology in the latter half of the 17th century found ready to their hand. While the physiological significance of the different organs of the human body and of most animals were known to every one, at least in their more obvious features, the study of vegetable life had to begin with laborious enquiries, whether the different parts of plants are generally necessary to their maintenance and propagation, and what functions must be ascribed to individual parts for the good of the whole. ”

“ From the slightest wound we can make in it, there bursts forth an abundant stream of liquid, a kind of nutritive sap, coming from the herbacious envelope which answers the same purpose as leaves, and which, so to speak, has been the principal focus of vegetable life. ”

“ If in spring or summer, when vegetable life is in activity, when the development of leaves, of flowers, and fruit, is at its greatest energy, end all the vessels of the plant are distended with its nutritious juices, were it suddenly exposed to cold, the sap would be frozen, and by the expansion of the ice the vegetable tissues torn to pieces, and the plant killed. ”

“ Vegetation is, however, tolerably abundant—tamarisks, oleanders, kafas, euphorbias, the milk bush, rhamnus and acacias being the most common and most characteristic forms of vegetable life, and pools of water are frequent. ”

“ Vegetables are irritable; mimosa, dionæa muscipula. Vegetable secretions. 2. Vegetable buds are inferior animals, are liable to greater or less irritability. II. Stamens and pistils of plants shew marks of sensibility. III. Vegetables possess some degree of volition. IV. Motions of plants are associated like those of animals. V. 1. Vegetable structure like that of animals, their anthers and stigmas are living creatures. Male-flowers of Vallisneria. 2. Whether vegetables, possess ideas? They have organs of sense as of touch and smell, and ideas of external things? ”

“ Further, there seems to be an indissoluble bond existing between all the sources of food. There are the same classes of elements in flesh as in flour, and the same in animals as in vegetables. The vegetable draws water and minerals from the soil, while it absorbs and incorporates the air in its own growth, and is then eaten to sustain the life of animals, so that animals gain the substances which the vegetable first acquired. ”

“ While the power of absorption in the roots and barks of vegetables is excited into action by the fluids applied to their mouths like the lacteals and lymphatics of animals.
2. The individuals of the vegetable world may be considered as inferior or less perfect animals; a tree is a congeries of many living buds, and in this respect resembles the branches of coralline, which are a congeries of a multitude of animals. Each of these buds of a tree has its proper leaves or petals for lungs, produces its viviparous or its oviparous offspring in buds or seeds ”

“ Certain exceptions to this definition of vegetable life, as being exhaustive, are found in the Fungi, which germinate and grow in darkness, and it is believed are nourished in great measure by organic matter, as well as in the curious carnivorous plants, which have of late attracted so much attention. ”

“ To the divisibility of the former it is owing, that the latter are enabled to push their roots into the earth; to their density, that plants maintain themselves in an erect posture, rise into the air, and resist the action of the winds and rains; and to their power of absorbing and holding water, the advantage of a prolonged application of moisture, necessary or useful to vegetable life. But besides performing these important offices, there is reason to believe that they contribute to the food of vegetables. This opinion rests on the following considerations and experiments:
1. ”

“ This exists in many vegetables in great abundance as in vines, sycamore, birch, and most abundantly in the palm-tree, (Isert's Voyage to Guinea,) and seems to be a similar fluid in all plants, as chyle is similar in all animals.
Hence as the digested food of vegetables consists principally of sugar, and from that is produced again their mucilage, starch, and oil, and since animals are sustained by these vegetable productions, it would seem that the sugar-making process carried on in vegetable vessels was the great source of life to all organized beings. ”

“ To a great extent, indeed, vegetation seems to be merely a process for the conversion of inorganic matter into a proper nutriment for the support of animal life; and many species of animals seem in their turn to be little else than living machines for the conversion of vegetable substances into a nutriment fit for other species by which they are intended to be devoured. ”

“ And thus may it be perhaps in the business of Moss and Mould, and Mushroms, and several other spontaneous kinds of vegetations, which may be caus’d by a vegetative principle, which was a coadjutor to the life, and growth of the greater Vegetable, and was by the destroying of the life of it stopt and impeded in performing its office ”

“ LESSON XXIX.
USEFUL VEGETABLES.
In the heart of a seed buried deep, so deep, A dear little plant lay fast asleep.
"Wake!" said the sunshine, "and creep to the light."
"Wake!" said the voice of the raindrops bright.
The little plant heard, and it rose to see
What the wonderful outside world might be.
What vegetables grow in your neighborhood?
Of which do we use the roots as food? Of which the leaves? Of which the seeds? Of which the stems or stalks?
Which is the most useful garden vegetable? There is no common garden vegetable so highly thought of as the potato. ”

“ Plant food is of as many kinds, or, more accurately speaking, in as many forms, as is food for human beings. But the first distinction to make in plant foods is that between available and non- available foods—that is, between foods which it is possible for the plant to use, and those which must undergo a change of some sort before the plant can take them up, assimilate them, and turn them into a healthy growth of foliage, fruit or root. ”

“ Plants take up their food through innumerable and microscopic feeding rootlets, which possess the power of absorbing moisture, and furnishing it, distributed by the plant juices, or sap, to stem, branch, leaf, flower and fruit. ”

“ Vegetable forms of a higher and a higher order gradually succeed each other, each series perishing in due season, and giving to the soil additional elements for the growth of plants of their own species or those of others. Flowering herbs find a genial home on the once bare rock ”

“ Such is however the condition of mortality, that the first law of nature is, "Eat or be eaten." We cannot long exist without the destruction of other animal or vegetable beings, either in their mature or their embryon state. Unless the fruits, which surround the seeds of some vegetables, or the honey stolen from them by the bee, may be said to be an exception to this assertion. See Botanic Garden, P. I. Cant. I. l. 278. Note. Hence, from the necessity of our nature, we may be supposed to have a right to kill those creatures, which we want to eat, or which want to eat us. ”

“ Vegetables, which are the lowest in the scale of living things, are fed by roots, which, implanted in the native soil, select by the action of a peculiar mechanism, different subjects, which serve to increase and to nourish them.
As we ascend the scale we find bodies gifted with animal life and deprived of locomotion. They are produced in a medium which favors their existence, and have special and peculiar organs which extract all that is necessary to sustain the portion and duration of life allotted them. They do not seek food, which, on the contrary, comes to seek them. ”

“ Both begin in a seminal point but the seed is not analogous; both develop—but not by an analogous growth; both require food, but the selection, the digestion and the assimilation are different. The mineral kingdom is the lowest. Out of it, by help of the sun and air, the vegetable procures its materials of growth; in turn the vegetable kingdom is the magazine from which the animal kingdom is sustained; to each, thus the soil contains the original elements; the vegetable is the chemical manipulator, and the animal, the final recipient of its products. ”

“ In vegetable nutrition the organic matter of dead animals, or vegetables, undergoes chemical decompositions and new combinations on or beneath the surface of the earth; and parts of it, as they are produced, are perpetually absorbed by the roots of the plants in contact with it ”

“ Most of the vegetables consumed in the large cities are transported a considerable distance, and if those people who eat these much-traveled vegetables raise their own, the transportation system will be relieved to that amount.
The raising and caring for plants is certain to broaden one’s interest. Very few people who cultivate a vegetable-garden, or any other kind of garden, for that matter, are likely to be satisfied until they know something of the physiology of plants, how and why they grow, and the principles underlying successful plant culture. ”

“ When we reflect upon the quantity of moss which covers the hardest stones, the trunks of trees, and the most barren places;—when we consider the quantity of vegetables upon the surface of the earth; the different species of flowers which delight and refresh us; the trees and bushes, add to these the aquatic plants, some of which exceed a hair in fineness;—we may be able to form some idea of the multitude of plants in the vegetable kingdom. All these species grow up, and are preserved without detriment or injury, each having that place assigned it, which is most suited to its properties. ”

“ But the real interest of the dedication is its clear statement of his views on the nutrition of plants. He asserts that plants obtain nourishment, not only from the earth, "but also more sublimed and exalted food from the air, that wonderful fluid, which is of such importance to the life of Vegetables and Animals," etc. ”

“ The food of plants we have seen to consist essentially of two kinds, the organic and the inorganic, both of which we have insisted upon as equally necessary to the living vegetable—equally indispensable to its healthy growth. A brief glance at the purposes served by plants in the feeding of animals, will not only confirm this view, but will also throw some additional light upon the kind of inorganic food which the plants must be able to procure, in order that they may be fitted to fulfil their assigned purpose in the economy of nature. ”

“ The most singular vegetable production in this country is called the flower of the air, from having no root, and never growing on the ground. Its native situation is on the surface of an arid rock, or twining round the dry stem of a tree. ”

“ Most vegetable organisms remain stationary, while some possess organs of locomotion, and swim about in the water in a manner much resembling the movements of certain animals. Most vegetables obtain their nutriment from the earth and the air, while animals subsist on living matter. A few plants seem to take organic matter for food, some even catching and killing small insects. ”

“ The vegetable feeds solely on chemical, unorganized matters; the animal solely on matter organized, on some plant, or on some other animal which feeds on plants. No animal can live on the food of plants. ”

“ We found our want of botanical knowledge a great disadvantage; for had we been acquainted with the various products of the soil, we might not only have stayed our hunger, but obtained wholesome vegetable diet. ”

“ So that while the formation of leaf-buds in place of flower-buds may be and generally is due to an excess of nutrition, inducing over activity of the vegetative organs, the production of phyllomorphic or chloranthic flowers may be owing rather to a perversion of development arising from injury or from some debilitating agency. ”