Botany: The Science Of Plant Life - free ebook by Norman Taylor

BOTANY

The Science of Plant Life BY NORMAN TAYLOR Curator, Brooklyn Botanic Garden colophon P. F. COLLIER &amp; SON COMPANY NEW YORK ...

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PREFACE

T HIS book is for those who want some general knowledge of the plant world, without necessarily caring for the technical details upon which such knowledge is based. If it leaves the reader with an impulse to follow the subject further than has been possible here, it will have more than fulfilled its mission. Throughout the book, it has often been convenient to refer to plants or their behavior in terms implying reasoning faculties. Of course, plants are never reasoning things, reasonable as many

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INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER PLANTS AND OUR DAILY NEEDS

P ERHAPS few of us realize that without plants all our modern civilization would be swept away and that upon plants has been built all that we have so far accomplished and everything that we may yet become. The overthrow of any king or republic, the wiping out of all money and finance or any of the manifold evidences of our modern world could not for a moment be compared to what would happen to us with the sudden destruction of plant life from the earth. Food and drink, the very houses we live i

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1. Flowering Plants

The fact of outstanding importance to everyone who really looks at most plants is that part of them are above ground and part below. This simple observation carries with it the recognition of a fundamental difference of plant structure, namely roots and stem. Most plants bear obvious leaves, and at some time in their life flowers, inevitably followed by fruits and seeds. The ideally perfect plant would consist, then, of root, stem, leaves, flowers, fruit, and seed. These are subject to many chan

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2. Flowerless Plants

In the light of what has been said about flowers it may well be questioned how anything can be a plant and still have no flower. The fact is that flowers as we commonly understand them are unknown in the plants about to be discussed, but that what corresponds to a flower, and performs the function of a flower all plants must and do have. In the case of most flowering plants the possession of flowers is one of the beauties of nature in its most resplendent mood, while in the so-called flowerless

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1. Light and Its Importance To the Plant

P RACTICALLY all that has been said in the first chapter relates to what plants are, their organs, or what we may call the architecture or plan of their framework. But what they do with this elaborate structure is as important as what we do with a house that may contain every modern improvement but is never a home until these things have been put to use. One of the chief concerns of any architect is to see to it that the house has as much sunshine by day and as attractive illumination by night a

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2. How Plants Get Their Food and Water From the Earth

If we could stretch an apparently impervious membrane, like the inner white skin just inside an eggshell, or a piece of parchment, and so form a wall through the middle of a glass box, and then pour into one of the compartments pure water and in the other a mixture of water and molasses, a very curious result would follow within a comparatively short period. We should find that presently there would be a gentle filtering of the water through the membrane toward the molasses water, and similar ge

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3. Borrowing From the Living and Robbing From the Dead

With such a beautifully perfected mechanism for getting food it might seem as though all plants would be satisfied to lead that life of independence for which they are so splendidly equipped. Some of them, however, are like men in one respect: there seems to be no end to the chase after getting something for nothing. Those that stand on their own roots, get their food honestly, and take nothing for which they do not make prodigal returns, make up the great bulk of the vegetation of the earth. Th

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4. What Plants Do With Water and How They Breathe

Some one has said that one day without water would make men liars, in two days they become thieves, and after the third or fourth day they would kill to get water. In the Army Records at Washington is a report of one of our expeditions, which in chasing Indians got lost in a desert, and in which the soldiers fought among themselves for even the most repulsive liquids. It hardly needs these gruesome examples, however, to confirm what everyone who has ever been mildly thirsty knows, that water is

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5. Restless and Irritable Plants

In walking through the quiet cathedrallike stillness of a deep forest or over the fields and moors, perhaps our chief thought is how restful the scene is, and what a contrast the quiet, patient plants make to the darting insects or flitting birds that our walk disturbs. We found at the beginning of this book that ability to get about is one of the main differences between animals and plants. Like so many first thoughts, this is, however, only a half truth, for while most plants, seemingly by a k

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1. Visible Marriage of Flowering Plants

In the first chapter, under the section devoted to flowers, we found that the stamens are the male and the pistils the female organs of reproduction. As the period for mating draws near there is developed in the anther , which is the enlarged tip of the stamen, a fine, usually yellow, powder known as pollen . This matures in the anther, and when ripe is discharged from tiny pores. Pollen is made up of individual pollen grains , which are very often stuck together so that we see only the mass, no

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2. Hidden Marriage of Flowerless Plants

As we stated in the first chapter cryptogams , while they produce no flowers, must bear organs that perform the functions of flowers in the reproduction of new individuals. Because, generally speaking, the process is more hidden in its manifestations, and nearly always requires the aid of the microscope to detect it, it is not so well known as the reproductive processes of flowering plants by those who have not the opportunity to manipulate such instruments. The act, however, is just as interest

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Plant Names and How They Are Acquired

As we always have at least two names, one to show that we are a Smith, for instance, and another to fix us as John Smith, so all plants have two names, sometimes three. And because plants come from all over the world and are studied and loved by people of many different languages, it became necessary very early in the descriptive writings about them to hit upon some device that should insure the name of a particular plant being the same all over the world, whether used by a student in the Imperi

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PLANT FAMILIES AND ORDERS

A scientist once visiting in Bulgaria noticed that the peasants in that country frequently lived over a hundred years and, in trying to find out the reason, he discovered that they drank large quantities of sour milk. This is alive with a definite kind of bacterium that is of great benefit to the digestive apparatus, and therefore helps in the prolongation of life. In Bulgaria, in other words, a certain food habit of the people has resulted in a definite prolongation of life and fixes that popul

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Some Monocotyledonous Plant Families

Of the simple plants of this group the Grass Family, or Poaceæ ( Figure 86 ), is the most important, for in it are all our turf grasses, the bamboo and sugar cane, besides scores of others. Over 4,500 species are known, and they inhabit every region of the globe. The steppes of Russia and our Great Plains are predominately grassy; in the wonderful bamboo forests in the tropics are also woody representatives of this family. Certain kinds in the tropics grow as vines, with great hooked spines at t

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Dicotyledonous Plant Families

All the great bulk of the flowering plants not included in the monocotyledons or the gymnosperms belong to about two hundred plant families that are included in the dicotyledons. In all of them the seed sends up two seed leaves, there are generally netted-veined leaves and the parts of the flower are in fours or fives or multiples of these numbers. In such a large aggregation of plant families there are three well-marked divisions, namely, those that bear no petals or sepals, those that do bear

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1. Foods

Those early ancestors of ours that roamed over northern and central Europe between the periods of ice invasion, which at times made all that country uninhabitable, tell us by the relics of them found in caves that agriculture was then unknown. Living mostly by the chase and on a few wild fruits picked from the forest these half-wild and savage people wandered wherever game was plentiful and the continental glacier would permit. But there came a day when one of these races began the cultivation o

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2. Beverages

The operation of the Eighteenth Amendment to our Constitution will stop the manufacture in this country of the chief beverages that were made here from plants. All wines and brandies were from the juice of the grape, whiskey from rye and some other cereals, and beer from hops and barley. Our three remaining beverages of practically universal use are none of them produced in the United States, with the exception of a little tea grown in a more or less experimental way. It is related in an old leg

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3. Fibers

Not only do plants furnish us with food and drink, but most of our clothing is made from plant products. There is annually produced twice as much cotton as wool, while linen is made from the fibers in the stem of the flax plant, which is also the source of linseed oil. Fibers occur in many different parts of plants, but most often in the stem, or in the bark of the stem. Some occur in the wood itself, as for instance that in spruce wood, from which news paper is made. Others are found in the att

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4. The Story of Rubber

Along the north coast of Haiti, particularly near Cap Haiti and Puerto Plata, there are scattered a few plantations devoted to rubber growing; and it is not without interest that Columbus on his first voyage landed at about this precise spot in December, 1492, and found the natives playing a game of ball made of rubber. He wrote: “The balls were of the gum of a tree, and although large, were lighter and bounced better than the wind balls of Castile.” This is apparently the first notice of the us

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5. Drugs

Nearly all the drugs and medicines of importance are of vegetable origin, and from the days of Theophrastus the study of plants as possible medicines has been one of the chief phases of botanical research. In the early days all that was known about plants was learned by men interested in medicine, and some of their quaint old books are interesting relics of a bygone day. At present, pharmacognosy, or the science of medicinal plant products, is a highly developed specialty taught in medical and p

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6. The Story of Tobacco

Not until 1492 was the use of tobacco known to the Europeans, when Columbus found the natives of Cuba and Santo Domingo both chewing and smoking it. Subsequent Spanish explorers of the mainland found its use almost universal both in North and South America. It had apparently been used there for countless ages, as smoking it formed part of the most solemn ceremonial rites both of the natives’ religion and their political gatherings. Brought to England in 1586 by Ralph Lane and Sir Francis Drake,

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7. Spices

As we have seen many of our most valuable food plants are natives of and are now cultivated in temperate regions, but “sugar and spice and all things nice” mostly come from the tropics. What we usually know as spices such as nutmeg, vanilla, ginger, mace, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon are practically all confined to the tropical regions in or near the East Indies, only vanilla being of American origin. The trade in these spices has been for hundreds of years a practical monopoly in the hands of

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Plant Materials for the Garden TREES

So much of what makes landscapes permanently beautiful depends upon trees that first place must always be given to them in any scheme of planting. The location and ultimate spread of these trees will infallibly make or mar any garden picture so that great care should be used in selecting and planting them. The actual planting details such as preparation of the soil and all the after care of plants cannot be dealt with here, but many nursery catalogues give accurate directions and there are hosts

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EVERGREENS

White Pine, Pinus Strobus . Austrian Pine, Pinus Austriaca . Scotch Pine, Pinus sylvestris . Pitch Pine, Pinus rigida . Red Pine, Pinus resinosa . Umbrella Pine, Sciadopitys verticillata . White Fir, Abies concolor . Fraser’s Fir, Abies Fraseri . Nordman’s Fir, Abies Nordmanniana . Norway Spruce, Picea excelsa . White Spruce, Picea alba . Red Spruce, Picea rubens . Koster’s Blue Spruce, Picea pungens glauca . Engelmann’s Spruce, Picea Engelmannii . Juniper. Different species of the genus Juniper

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DECIDUOUS TREES

Planted mostly for their foliage masses, but a few bear showy flowers and such will be noted. The same symbols apply. American Beech, Fagus ferruginea . European Beech, Fagus sylvatica . White Oak, Quercus alba . Red Oak, Quercus rubra , the most rapid grower of all the oaks. Scarlet Oak, Quercus coccinea . Horsechestnut, Aesculus Hippocastanum . Norway Maple, Acer platanoides . Red Maple, Acer rubrum . Prefers moist places. Sugar Maple, Acer saccharum . Silver Maple, Acer saccharinum . Fine tre

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SHRUBS

While trees make the major feature of any garden, shrubs are chiefly used to fill in between them, or in small gardens the only woody plants that can be used are often shrubs. Within the last two or three years the Government has prohibited the importation of plants from abroad, upon the ground that various insect pests and fungous diseases were likely to be carried into the country upon such plants. For this reason American gardeners will have to propagate their own plants and we shall have to

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GARDEN HERBS

The foregoing lists of shrubs and trees give sufficient information so that all garden enthusiasts can at least make the broad outlines of a garden picture. It must never be forgotten that these woody plants are the only really permanent things in the scheme and should therefore be placed with more care and thought than the herbs, which can be moved at will. In selecting herbs, two chief divisions of them should be kept in mind; annuals which are planted for quick effects and which die down at t

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COLOR, SEASON, AND HEIGHT OF HARDY PERENNIALS

A study of the following list will show any garden amateur how he may group his perennials in borders or beds and how he can get different color effects at different seasons and in plants of different heights. This admirable list of perennial plants was prepared by Charles Downing Lay, a landscape architect, and published by “Landscape Architecture.” The editors of that publication and Mr. Lay have kindly consented to having the list reprinted here....

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ANNUALS

For those who prefer growing flowers merely to pick, the quickest way of getting them is to plant summer-blooming annuals. A list of thirty popular annuals, all of them easily grown, is given below. BLOOMING IN JULY BLOOMING IN AUGUST...

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1. Dawn of Plant Life On Earth

T HE quotation from the second sentence of the first chapter of Genesis tells us more in eight words than could very well be said in as many chapters. Not only have we biblical authority for this early absence of life on the earth, but all the accumulated knowledge of the ages points in the same direction. We have already seen that plants, because they can take inorganic substances from the earth and air and transform them into organic food, must in all probability have come on the earth before

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2. The Development of Land Plants

After the reign of algæ and other cryptogamous water plants, our knowledge of which is so unsatisfactory because of the incompleteness of the fossil record, there appeared the first evidences of plants that were able to live with “one foot on the land and the other in the water,” so to speak. How many transitional stages there may have been, and what relation any of these may bear to existing plants, is not known, or is, at any rate, so little understood that it is a disputed point. But somewher

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3. Carboniferous Plants and the Formation of Coal

The carboniferous time, or the period when the earth was covered with huge forests of strange shrubs and trees, most of which were unlike their modern successors, apparently had a climate so nearly uniform and seasonless that fossil remains of these plants have been found throughout the world. Even in the Arctic the rock strata show the flourishing of forests that must have needed a climate very different from the frigid condition there to-day, and furnishing indisputable evidence of a warm, mos

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4. More Recent Ancestors of Our Modern Flora

The vegetation at the ending of Carboniferous times was much affected by the great changes in the earth’s surface which happened then. The thrusting up of great mountain chains, the slow encroachment of continental glaciers, and the other phenomena characterizing that period could not but be reflected in the plant population. For one thing the giant club mosses and horsetails were much reduced in extent and finally disappeared, leaving only the immediate ancestors of our present-day forms. Corda

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5. Present-Day Plants and Where They Come From

There are living to-day somewhere about 150,000 species of flowering plants; half a hundred conifers or gymnosperms; about 3,500 ferns; 500 club mosses; over 70,000 bacteria, fungi, and lichens, and probably over 20,000 species of algæ. The estimates of the last three divisions are more or less uncertain, as many species are still being discovered. From what has just been read regarding the plants of earlier periods it is at once clear how completely the flowering plants have conquered all their

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6. How Plants Change Their Characters and Become New Species

It was with something very different in mind than the changing of plant characters that Cardinal Newman once said: “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to change often.” And yet nothing better expresses the facts of plants’ ability to change and the results of it than this reply of a great churchman to critics who could not or would not understand the truth of his now famous reply. It is perhaps best to begin any discussion of the changes in plants by remembering a few simple facts regard

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1. Dispersal By Animals, the Wind, and Water

The seeds or fruits of those plants that are used for animal food are often carried considerable distances, while the thrifty squirrels’ burying of acorns is everyday knowledge to those who have seen them busily engaged in the making of winter stores, or the planting of new trees, often many rods from the parent tree. In years of plentiful seed production squirrels have been known to plant great quantities of seeds of the Douglas fir, thereby hastening the establishment of one of the greatest ev

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2. Invasion, Migration, and Relics

It is perhaps a natural enough question why such elaborate and effective methods of seed dispersal are necessary and why plants, once they grow in any particular locality are not satisfied to stay there. The answer to this is that individual and racial competition is so great that without means of dispersal, which may be looked on as equipment for seeking a more favorable site, species would often be crowded out. There is no better place to see this than at the edge of a forest and grassland. Th

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3. Home Economy of Plants, or Ecology

The geographic distribution of species of plants may be, as we have seen, the result of the geological changes of the past, of bird migrations, of more or less fortuitously water-borne seeds, or more usually of the slow spreading by invasion of those species apparently not so well supplied with external helps to dispersal. But no matter where plants grow, nor how they got there, they must fit the particular environment in which they find themselves or perish. This home economy of plants, or how

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4. Some of the Chief Plant Societies

No one who has ever seen both our temperate forests and those in the tropics can fail to be impressed with the difference between them. Not only for the different plants in them, but for their wholly different aspect, tropical and temperate forests stand far apart as an expression of the forest covering the earth. Not all of us realize, however, that the heat of the tropics is not the deciding factor in the luxuriance of those dim jungles, and that a rainfall far above anything occurring in the

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