Botany; the story of plant life

Front matter

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Contents

I. The Story of the Eoot (January) . .

II. The Story of the Stem (February)

III. The Hope of Years to Come (March)

Chapter I The Story Of The Root

January

" Never quite shall disappear The glory of the circling year."

THE EXTENT OF PLANT LIFE

Plant life extends over almost the entire surface of the globe. If, as is highly probable, the waters of the Polar seas, under the perpetual ice-cap, have their algae, or sea-weeds, then the only places really destitute of vegetation are the crests of the highest mountains, the highest regions of glaciers and ever-enduring snows.

The seas are full of sea-weeds, from the most minute to the largest known plants. Under the snow of the Arctic region are beds of lichens, while upon

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the surface are the tiny algae, known as " crimson snow."

The faces of great rocks bear films of lichens, which, when observed under the microscope, appear as groves and forests, wherein play minute animals, invisible to unaided eyes. The long-dead logs and rails in fences are clothed with fairy gardens, knobs of gold, cups of scarlet, frost-work of gray, white, black, green.

Parasites and epiphytes hang high upon the branches of the trees ; gray-green mistletoe, flaming orchids ; while about the grasses and little shrubs twines the dodder, also a parasite ; and from the spreading roots of pines lift the wax-white beech-drops.

The waters of ponds are covered with what people loosely call " green scum from stagnation," but which is nothing more nor less than a floating bed of strange plants. Water-lilies and other aquatic growths spring from the mud-beds of ponds, and along the margins of rivers. The stones underwater afford root-hold for plants.

. Plant life invades the store-closet and pantry ; it takes hold upon loaves of bread, the tops of jars of preserves, pickles, and jellies — "mold" we call it. If we examine it carefully, this " mold " turns out to be a crowded collection of little plants,

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beautifully shaped and highly colored. Were it not for this invasion of our domestic privacy by plant life, we should have no yeast and no vinegar.

Deep down into the wells climb the lichens and algae ; the marl-pit and the lime-kiln are no sooner abandoned by men than nature prepares to send her plant-hosts to take possession. If there is a crack in a rock, a seed falls into it, germinates, rives the rock ; lo ! life triumphs over death, and action over inaction. If the greatest cities in the world were now abandoned of men, within fifty years the houses would be draped with lichens, vines, fungi; the streets would be a tangle of weeds, creepers, briars ; great forest trees would rise on every side ; the battalions of the birds, the cohorts of the winds would bring the seeds and superintend the reconverting of the abodes of humanity to tangled wilderness.

Vegetable life preceded man upon the earth, and keeps equal pace with him in his progress upon it. Wherever man abides the plants accompany him. We think of the frigid zones as denuded of vegetation ; even there, in the brief summers, poppies bloom and grasses wave close to the retreating snow-line. So the Alpine eidelweiss and gentian climb the heights and nod under the edges of the glaciers.

The existence of plant life is a condition upon which human existence depends. The presence <>t'

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plants is as needful to the life of man as air, light, and water.

THE UTILITY OF PLAXT LIFE

Why is the plant needful to the life of animals? For food : Plant life must have preceded animal life, because the original food of the animal is the plant. Plants are the great food-making shops. Only plants can take mineral substances from soil or water and convert them into food stuff. Animals cannot feed upon minerals ; the minerals must be converted into vegetable material before animals can assimilate them. The first food of the first animal, whatever that animal was — some sea-creature of simple form, probably — was some small and simple sea-weed, which had existed before the animal.

The plant can live without the animal ; the animal cannot live without the plant. The plant can take its food directly from soil, air, and water; the animal must have the plant for its middleman in its dealings with nature. There are, it is true, carnivorous animals, creatures feeding upon flesh, either living, dead or decayed. This flesh, however, is of creatures that are vegetable eaters. The lion devours the antelope, kid or giraffe. These are eaters of herbs. We humans drink milk and eat meat, as well as vegetable substances, but our animal food

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and drink come to us from vegetable-eaters. We use fish largely ; these feed immediately or remotely upon vegetables.

An ample proportion of our medicines, ointments, and other healing agents come to us from plants.

To the plant world we look for a large amount of our clothes, as linen and cotton directly ; silk from the mulberry-fed silk-worm ; wool from the grasseating sheep ; leather from vegetable-devouring mammals.

The plant world affords us fuel, immediately as wood, or remotely from the coal beds, which once were forests.

Our houses and our furniture are largely of wood, contributed by the plant. world. Our horses and oxen serve us with strength supplied by plant-food. The presence of vegetation increases that downfall of rain which fills our springs, wells, streams, cisterns.

The plants, with their million million busy mouths, devour from the air seeds of pestilence, converting them into beauty and utility; they pour into our atmosphere oxygen, and sip out of it noxious carbonic acid gas. Thus on every hand, for the luxuries and the necessities of our lives, we arc debtors to the plant

THE STUDY OF PLANT LIFE

This beneficent and abounding vegetation has always attracted the observation and aroused the curiosity of the human race. From the earliest times plants have been more or less profoundly investigated, their beauty and utility alike provoking attention. Amid mistakes, myths, superstitions, the inquiry has progressed, each generation arriving at some real knowledge to add to the stock gained before. Errors have been corrected, discoveries made, mysteries unsealed, the study becoming more and more beautiful under the search-lights of science. In these days a young student may easily know as much about the plant world as Solomon, Esculapius or Pliny.

No pursuit is more conducive to health, happiness, refinement of character than the study of plants. This pleasing pursuit keeps one largely in the open air, in company with pure and helpful thinking; the subjects for study are spread liberally on every hand. Without books or instruments, simply by spending leisure time and careful observation upon the plants about his feet, one can become a fairly good botanist. Aided by books, teachers, a cabinet, microscope, and collections, one can make rapid advances in plant lore. The passion for botanical work grows by in-

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dulgence. For all these reasons parents and teachers should lead the minds of the young to the interests of plant life.

The study of botany is not " merely the pulling of plants to pieces to find out certain dry names " ; it is directed to every department of the plant world, and invades and brings back trophies from the wonder and romance land of the vegetable kingdom.

One may begin with fossil plants, may continue with the alga? of the waters, the lichens on the walls, the mosses in the wood, or find ample occupation in the life mysteries of the splendid hosts of the flowering plants.

THE BORDER-LAND

One may begin to study the most highly specialized blossoms, and insensibly be led, step by step, down to the lower planes of life. The rose beckons the student back along the line of plant ascent, and beguiles to an investigation of that lesser relation, the strawberry, and more humble yet, the star-fa cinquefoil. Lower still, the microscope piloting the way. we may be among tin.' invisible, SO far as the naked eve is concerned. We study, bent over the pond. L r la— in hand, tin.' duck-weed : and here is something lashing tic water, showing motion ; is it an animal or a vegetable? We have reached the

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border-land where these two meet — and mingle. A Jew decades ago we were told that the sponges marked this indefinite land. Now, the sponges have their indubitable place in the animal kingdom, and the microscope must direct our way to the wonderful " What is it?" animal or vegetable?

Cuvier found four characteristics which duly marked the animal from the plant : 1. A food reservoir or stomach ; 2. Circulatory system ; 3. Locomotion and sensibility, provided for by a more complicated body containing nitrogen ; 4. Respiration. In the years that have gone since Cuvier, we have found that some animals lack the digestive apparatus and some plants possess it. The test mark of the circulatory system was practically given up by Cuvier himself ; chemistry has annihilated the third distinction, for nitrogen is as essential to plants as to animals ; finally, the respiration of plants is as fully marked as in many species of animals.

What is the test-mark then, the broad arrow of the animal kingdom ? Who knows ? Huxley tells us that Professor Tyndall asked him to examine some microscopic objects traveling in water " by spasmodic wiggles."

" What do you call them ?" asked Tyndall.

" They may be animals, and then again they may be vegetables," said Huxley.

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Mr. Tyndall replied that " he would as soon believe a sheep to be a plant."

And yet, Huxley says that, after, long study, he remains where he was at first : " There is no reason why this minute monad may not be an animal, and there is equally no reason why it may not be a vegetable."

Such is that border-land between the animal and the plant, where the foot of the diligent botanist may ultimately tread. Into such Dark Continent we do not propose to go. In this simple little work a guide-book to the beginning of the way, we merely commence the study of Plant Life with the earth and end in the earth.

FROM ROOT TO FRUIT

There is no season of the year in which we cannot pursue the story of plant life. Every month offers its theme. Let us devote January to making the acquaintance of the root. When a seed germinates it sends forth a sprout, placed perpendicularly. The upper growing point is the stem or ascending axis. It has affinity for light and heat ; it produces buds, which develop into leaves, blossoms, and other parts of a plant. This stem also produces roots, for its downward portion has affinity for darkness and moisture; it is an earth-lover, produces no

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buds, and becomes the root or roots of the new plant.

It is no matter of mere chance which axis of the new sprout goes up, and which down ; the stem will make a complete bend around the parent seed, if that is needed to reach the surface of the earth ; while its proper lower part will be at equal trouble to bury itself in the soil.

It is a popular fallacy that stems grow from roots. On the contrary roots grow from stems. Even in the perennial roots of plants which die down to the ground each autumn, the root does not send up fresh stems, a portion of true stem remains under ground on the root crown, and this it is which sends up budbearing stems. The distinguishing mark of the true root is that it bears no buds, no leaves, no scales.

There are underground stems and there are also aerial roots. AVe have all noted the fringe of roots starting from the lower joints of a cornstalk, and growing perhaps several inches before entering the earth. The heavy stalk needs these additional moorings, as tents need their cords. Some trees, as the banyan, put forth roots from branches high in air. These must grow many feet before they can enter the earth. None of these roots put forth leaves. We find on brook sides sometimes great portions of apparent roots, laid bare by the falling away of covering earth.

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In a few years some of these put on a heavy bark, like that of the trunk, and throw out tufts of leaves or twigs. This proves them to be branches sent forth underground, at the base of the stem.

A potato is a thick underground stem. The true roots of the potato-vine are the string-like fibres which grow from the lower portion of the erect stem. What we call the potato is a stem thickened for a food reservoir. The eyes on this potato are buds : by each one is a thin oval or triangular slip of scale — a modified, abnormal leaf. The potato-eyes beingplanted, with a portion of potato for food, begin to grow and send out stems and leaves.

What is a lily bulb — a root ? Cut it in two, behold, it is a stem with two buds for next year at its base. These thick white scales are closely packed bleached leaves or leaf-bases, which never develop further, but which are detailed to furnish food to be absorbed by the growing stem. A case nearly similar is afforded by the onion.

Take a sweet potato ; that has not the eyes nor the scales that an Irish potato shows, to prove its status as a stem. What is it? A sweet potato is a thickened portion of the true root, Most of the roots of a sweet potato vine are fibrous, but in places they swell out, forming solid masses, which are storehouses of sugar and starch for plant-food. The tendency of the sweet potato in a wild state to form these food masses has been emphasized by careful cultivation.

Roots are called fibrous when composed entirely of string-like clusters, as, for instance, a bunch of grass or corn roots.

Fleshy roots are those that thicken and expand, as in the beet, turnip, and carrot. From these thickened parts true roots start forth. Look at a carrot; the rind or skin of the upper portion of this beautiful golden wedge has, by exposure at the surface of the ground, become tough, fibrous, greenish ; it has put forth a cluster of green leaves. The portion deeper in the earth has a thin, porous skin, bright golden color, and sends forth root fibres. This carrot is not, then, pure root throughout. The upper part of the wedge is stem. Let us carefully lay open the thick top, and cut out one by one the leaf stems. We can now see how they take their rise, and distinguish the true stem character of the upper part of the carrot. The meaning of the long thick wedge is again storehouse — food reservoir. The tendency of the carrot to lay up food in this way has been immensely increased by cultivation. Examine a wild carrot, or parsnip, and hi the very much smaller " root wedge " we shall detect the true stem character.- A primary root is the first root which starts

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from the young stem. It is also called the main root, or tap root, when it goes on growing without branching, except close beneath the stem. From the primary root may start out hairs, which develop into rootlets. When a number of nearly equal roots start out at once from the base of the stem they are called u multiple primary roots." There are more hairs near the tips of roots than anywhere else upon them. These hairs are the chief root channels for gathering nourishment.

All the surface of the root absorbs moisture, and this moisture holds in solution mineral foods, which are converted into vegetable substance by the plant. Every plant is a wonderful laboratory.

At the tip of each root is a hardened, scale-protected point, to enable it to work its way into the ground, just as the toes of moles and like digging animals are protected by nails. The root tip has also a sucker, for drawing up moisture. This is the chief mouth of the root. Although the pores of the entire root-surface absorb freely, the ends of the rootlets are the chief feeders.

A fibrous root is a feeding root. Fleshy roots are feeding roots through their surfaces and rootlets; they are also storehouses, or pantries, for laying up fond [or the future use of the plant This stored-up food is Largely starch and sugar. 2

The office of the root is : I. To obtain nutriment for the plant. II. To hold or moor the plant to the ground. III. To store up food for future use.

Most roots are fixed in the earth. There are also air or aerial roots, such as the ivy and trumpet-creeper send forth from the sides of the stem to serve as hands, to grapple the supports upon which they climb. Other aerial roots penetrate the bark of branches upon which they have fixed themselves, and then suck out sap for food.

Roots are called annual, when they live but one year ; biennial, when they live for two years ; perennial, or ever-enduring, when they live for many years. Some plants live over a thousand years. Ivies are noted of five hundred years old ; a grapevine eight hundred years old ; trees a thousand years old.

Roots naturally perennial may become annual when transplanted to colder than their native places. Cold, however, does not kill all roots, it merely suspends much of their activity.

When we walk about in January and see the earth frozen, or covered with snow, we need not fancy that all is still and dead under ground. There are millions of mouths below the surface, taking their rest, and feeding but little ; there are other millions of plant store-houses, food-full, for coming summer ;

TREASURES OF DARKNESS

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there are countless underground stems ; and all are waiting for the call of spring, to renew their activity, and clothe the earth with beauty.

In this cold, forbidding month of January the plant does not refuse to unveil to us some of the romance, the mystery, and the economy of its life. Pull up from some plat of unfrozen earth a few living roots and hold them against the light, after giving them a slight shake. Tiny particles of earth are now seen about the lower part of the root, not adhering to the epidermis, but held, perhaps, a line away, as if the root were covered with a browndotted lace veil. Examine closely, with the microscope if possible. Each atom of earth is held by a minute hair. These hairs are of great importance in the economy of the root. They adhere so very closely to the soil that they absorb from it the very slightest trace of moisture, if it be no more than such a light film as would be found if one breathed against glass. That earth must be dry as lava on Vesuvius at midday from which these hairs could not extract some particles of moisture. In times of great drought these fine hairs allow the plant to gather enough fluid to enable them to survive, and when the drooping plant is watered the hairs most speedily gather up and distribute the precious drops. These hairs are tubes, but they are tubes closed at

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the ends, and they do not absorb by capillary attraction, but by their entire surface, as their walls are porous. When we speak of tubes, pores, surface, in this connection, and pause to consider that in many cases each entire hair is almost microscopic in its smallness, we wonder, as we are always wondering when we study plant life, at the singular perfection, in detail, at the marvels of minutiae, at intricacy and accuracy in smallness. The life of each of these tiny root hairs is short, as the root grows and its thimble-cap, its armored apex advances, new hairs develop on its surface, and the previous ones die. Always there is a fresh series of absorbing hairs, these not only sucking moisture from the soil, but each one is a little laboratory, where chemical processes are carried on. The wall of the hair-cell divides the liquid which it receives into its different parts. It separates the crystals from the albumen or starch, and so passes it on, nicely prepared food-stuff for the plant.

Hairs are not found merely on roots. They occur on every part of the plant. In this month of January, so unsympathetic with plant life in our northern zone, we can make interesting studies in plant hairs of various kinds. In a wide botanical sense any appendages of the plant skin are hairs.

Here is a rose bush, raising its dry, reddish stems

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against a wall; here, along the garden path, are our rows of raspberry and blackberry vines, all well provided with prickles, which we carelessly call "thorns." Real thorns, however, are woody, will not come off with the skin, and are, in fact, hardened, undeveloped branches. The prickles strip off with the epidermis, and are really included properly under the general term of hairs.

These prickles- keep cows, sheep, and other grazing animals from eating up the bushes, which have a sweetish, aromatic taste, and are sufficiently tender to afford very tempting morsels to browsing beasts in winter, hungering for something fresh, as we humans long for the first crisp salads, radishes, and other spring vegetables. Were it not for these blessed prickles, not a rose nor a berry would greet our eyes next summer, but nature, having thoughtfully detailed this army of sharp pikesmen to defend her sleeping children, they will awaken in the spring in health and beauty..

Wandering a little farther afield in search of vegetable hairs, we see a tall, rough, dead rod, set with seed vessels at the top — the dried stalk of a mullein. At its base we shall find a large rosette of greenishgray, thick leaves ; some dry and dead, after a summer's expansion; sonic young and still succulent, having unfolded late in the autumn. All tin--**

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leaves are covered so thickly with hairs that they resemble leaves cut out of coarse flannel or felt. Every part of the mullein plant, except the petals, stamens, and pistils is hairy. It is a very Esau among plants ; nothing but a donkey would graze upon it. Exactly why a plant of so little value and attractiveness as the mullein should be so carefully defended, we cannot see ; the fairer sisters of its kin are left almost naked to cold winds and nipping teeth.

The hairs on the mullein plant may serve to make it unpalatable, but their primary use is probably as clothing for preserving an equal temperature and shielding the plant from cold and wet. Very many Alpine and far-northern plants are so protected. Another instance of hairs as clothing is afforded us this January day if we examine the tree buds. Some of them, it is true, seem to be very carelessly clad. They are of the hardier varieties. Some buds are waxed or varnished, but very many are hair-clad, fur-wrapped, nature thus dressing her precious babies for their winter outing.

Many seed pods are lined with a delicate network of hairs, which are especially numerous and closelywoven at the suture or seam of the pod, where it will open when the seeds are ripe.

Here in the fields we find some lingering pods of

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the silk- weed, which takes its name from the great mass of tine silky hairs which fills its seed vessels. Nature provided in this fashion for the dissemination of the seed. We loosen a handful of the dainty hairs from the pod, hold them to the air, and away they sail ! They remind us of so many other windblown seeds ! In spring the dandelion clocks are like fairy balloons tilting along the top of the grasses. The first breese loosens them ; away they go, silver boats with silken sails, voyaging to fairy land, to bring back to the children next spring another golden age ! Many a farmer who endures dandelions for old love's sake has cursed the equally-wellprovided thistle, and wished dire wreck to overtake every one of its little boats sailing the seas of air ; but thistles, like some other creations, seem to thrive particularly well on curses ! Prominent among all seeds provided with hairy sails stands one that has a world-wide and political importance — King Cotton. Wliat would the races of men do if that vast mass of snowy, elastic, tough hairs which enfold the oily seed of the cotton plant met disaster? Ruin, naked- . starvation would shriek around a world, all for want of certain vegetable hairs! Other planthairs have a lesa noble reputation. Here is a withered root of the crimson clover, an introduced variety. The Agricultural Department of the

United States sends out word that the hairs, plentiful on the calyx of this beautiful trefoil, are often dangerous to cattle, as they form balls in the intestines. If we close our January botanical ramble in a greenhouse, we are still met by fresh examples of vegetables hairs. Here is the stem of an elephant ear, hirsute as the face of a Russian sledge driver ; and here is a palm, with stem wrapped and twisted with long interlaced hairs until it looks like a ravelled door mat. Such hairs secure an equalized temperature, keep out wet when the plants grow in their native state in lands with rainy seasons, and serve in dry seasons to hinder the evaporation of the moisture of the plant. This study of plant hairs will come up again.

Chapter II The Story Of The Stem

February

" Ancient pines !

Ye bear no record of the years of man. Spring is your sole historian."

The stem is that part of the plant which bears all the other organs. It produces roots from its base ; leaves, branches, flowers, fruit from its sides and apex. As the human body maintains the head and limbs, sheltering within it the various organs of breathing, nutrition, circulation, etc., the stem serves the plant as a body, upbearing and supplying the organs.

One department of the plant world is truly stemless. These stemless plants have neither roots, leaves, nor seeds. They are mere expansions of cellular tissue, beautiful, useful, wonderful, varied. At present a few of their names, only, are mentioned with some of the most common examples. They form too difficult a study for the amateur in botany.

Some plants are apparently, but not truly, stemless, The leaves and flowers seem to spring directly from the roots. If we uncover the base of the leaf cluster we find a thickened root-like portion called " the crown of the root/' which is really a shortened stem, sending leaves and bloom from its upper surface, and roots from the lower surface, The dandelion, primrose, and cowslip are examples.

Take a cyclamen plant, lay it bare of earth, and you find a fleshy button, from the top of which grow leaves, from the bottom roots. This button is a stem, which, as a bright child said, " grows sideways, not upwards.'' Jack-in-the-pulpit, beloved of all children, has a solid bulb, called a corm, or very short stem. The roots are sent out, fringe-like, in a ring about the thickest part, above them rise leaves and Jack. The cyclamen button-stem enlarges and lasts for years ; the corm of Jack-in-the-pulpit forms the first year, is eaten by Jack for his health the next year, another corm forming during this process, just above the roots,

All this storing up of fleshy stem is to provide food for the upper parts of the plant. The lily, onion, hyacinth form bulbs of thick, bleached imperfect leaves, about the base of the stem, as described in the previous chapter; these are devoured in the process of seed making.

In the woods in May, you find a plant with a slender stem, gracefully bent by the weight of leaves

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and flowers. The leaves grow on the upper side of the stem, the little white bell-blossoms droop in the arch beneath them. This plant is the " Solomon's Seal." Later in the season these flowers have given place to blueberries containing seeds. Digging up this plant you will rind that the slender stem is but a branch from a thick underground stem, from six to ten inches long ; this lies horizontally, having at one end a bud preparing for a leaf and flower stem for next year. The underground stem is marked at regular intervals by a round, smooth scar, indicating where a stem died down to the undergound portion the previous year. Each year the new bud develops fresh roots, as it sends up a fresh stem. A length, as above given, having been made, each year a joint and scar die off at one end of the underground root, while the new bud forms at the other, decreasing at one end about as fast as it increases at the opposite extremity. The scars oh the Solomon's Seal underground stem mark each year of plant life ; they keep the record of its growth.