highest electrical bodies, which it exhales as sweet odours. Ætherial
oils ascend out of the corolla into the air.
1269. The filament, as a leaf-rib that has become free, is a moribund
ramuscular extremity, which still strives, according to the law of
pinnation, to produce three buds, whereof, however, the terminal one is
in general arrested, and the two lateral scarce attain unto apertion.
1270. The two lateral buds of the filaments are the _Anthers_. They
mostly open in a spathose manner, because they have not strength enough
to develop themselves as perfect gemmæ or buds.
1271. The anthers are to be regarded as follicles, which mostly rupture
upon the dorsal or external aspect.
1272. The starch-flour, which forms the precipitate termed albumen in
the seed, here obtains in the light-organ electrical properties, and is
called _pollen_.
1273. The pollen has a light-function in the plant.
1274. The function of the pollen must be differencing, thus vivifying
and secernent.
1275. The principal antagonism of the pollen is with the pistil, upon
which it must therefore act in a properly differencing manner. The
pollen does not hang, like the seed, by a stalk or pedicle to the wall
of the anther, but is exudated from it like chemical bodies. It is
nevertheless a vesicle, like all organic parts. This vesicle consists
of two membranes, and contains yet smaller vesicles, which are called
_fovilla_ or pollen-viscus. When the pollen comes into contact with the
moist surface of the stigma, its external membrane ruptures, and the
internal with its contained fovilla protruding in the form of a tube,
penetrates the style in many instances down to the seed, whereby the
germ first becomes developed or self-subsistent.
2. PISTIL OR OVARY.
1276. If the corolla be the light-flower, the stalk-flower is
heat-flower.
1277. The stalk-flower, as being a repetition of the stem, must
be developed later than the leaf-flower. It consequently stands
superiorly upon, and so far within, this. The corolla is related to the
stalk-flower like circumference to centre.
1278. The stalk repeated in the flower is the _Ovarium_, _germen_
or _pistillum_. It is frequently converted into wood in the nut and
becomes hardened into stone.
1279. Nevertheless, the pistil like the corolla is a leaf-formation,
because everything that originates subsequently to, can be none other
than, the leaf. It is a leaf-bud under the idea of the stalk. The
pistil is thus a leaf-whorl like the corolla, and one which is subject
to the same fatalities, only with this difference, that its leaves are
wont to open first after it has withered, and consequently through
physical forces.
1280. Every leaf that has been closed in a vesicular or tubular form
is a _follicle_ or _carpel_. There are therefore uni-, bi-, and
tri-locular ovaria, &c. The loculi or cells of the ovarium are none
other than closed carpels. As many therefore as there are of the
former, so many are there of the latter, and vice versâ. The septa or
partition-walls are none other than the involuted edges of the closed
and confluent carpels.
1281. Uni-locular ovaria consist therefore only of one leaf. The legume
is only a compressed carpel.
1282. Every carpel or every cell has its raphé or suture directed
inwards or along the axis of the flower. For the leaves are always so
conjoined that the two halves of the upper or inner side stand counter
to each other.
1283. All other sutures are adventitious and, by their mode of
dehiscence, determine those parts of the ovarium which are called
valves. These sutures are either _dorsal_ or on the back of the
carpel, e. g. _capsula loculicida_; _conjunctive_, where two carpels
abut against each other, e. g. _capsula septicida_; or finally, between
both by the side of the dorsal suture, so that the valve springing up
resembles a shutter, as in many siliquæ or pods.
1284. The columella of the ovary is none other than the internal edge
of the carpels from which the leaf-wall has been freed.
1285. Each carpel-leaf is to be regarded as the common petiole of a
pinnate leaf, upon whose lateral petioles the seeds depend. The seeds
always hang therefore upon the inner angle of the cells.
1286. As the parts of the corolla alternate with the calyx, so do the
carpels or cells of the ovary with the corolla; they stand therefore
opposite the parts of the calyx or are situated in front of them.
1287. The parts of the ovary follow also the uneven series of numbers,
one, three, five. The number two is usually found in irregular, e. g.
the labiate, corollæ.
1288. If few cells be present as parts of the flower, the carpels are
then to be regarded as arrested. In the personate corollæ three are
arrested, but in the papilionaceous, four. The legumen is only a fifth
part of the ovarium.
1289. The development of the carpels stands usually in an inverse
relation to the size of the parts of the corolla. Thus the legume is
situated between the two insignificant petals of the keel, opposite
to the large vexillum; in the Personatæ a carpel is situated in the
fissure of the upper lip; upon the lower lip, consisting of three
lobes, only one carpel is situated, which consequently supplies the
place of four, and is therefore also larger.
1290. The stages of leaf-formation are also displayed in the matured
state of the ovarium. The _radical_ or _scale-leaf_ is repeated in the
_cariopsis_; as in the grasses, orachs, nettles, and such like plants.
1291. The _spathe-leaf_ becomes a _siliqua_, or hollow capsule, in
which forsooth the septa are arrested, and the seeds stand upon the
conjoined edges of the carpels, upon their walls, or also upon a
mediate replum and placenta, as in the proper Siliquose plants with the
poppies, Resedæ, Primulæ and pinks.
1292. The reticular-leaf is perfected into a _capsule_, where the
carpels are so confluent with each other, that they form septa and bear
the seeds upon the internal angle or upon the axis, as in the Rues. If
these carpels separate, then polycarpal plants, as the Ranunculaceæ,
Malvaceæ, Magnoliaceæ, originate. In these the median columella is the
elongated floral peduncle. If they separate, without leaving a median
columella between them; they are then simply called _follicles_, as in
the larkspur and celandine. If this capsule be compressed flat; it is
called _legumen_, as in the beans.
1293. The cariopsis generally contains one and that a large seed; the
siliqua or hollow capsule is many-or small-seeded; the follicle few-or
moderately-seeded; the capsule many-and also few-seeded.
1294. In the cariopsis the seed is attached to the base or apex; in
the follicle in a row upon the inner suture; in the siliqua upon
the carpellar edges, or their walls, and on a meso-replum or frame;
in the capsule upon the inner angle or on a middle axis or column.
Seed-bearing alæ to the columella are only the carpellar edges
prolonged into the loculi or cells.
STYLE.
1295. What the stamen-filament is for the petal of the corolla, that is
the style for the ovarial petal or the carpel, viz. the rib that has
become free. As, however, the leaf-formation in the ovary is generally
imperfect, so also is the separation of the tissues or systems. The
style is not therefore freed at once from its root, but projects only
above the leaf-substance.
1296. But as the singular circumstance occurs in the ovary that the
midrib is arrested while only the marginal ribs shoot out, so is the
style the elongation and coalescence of the two marginal ribs. Every
stigma is therefore biacuminate.
1297. There must always be as many styles as the ovary has carpels or
cells. If only one style appear, in this case it is then made up of
several mid-ribs. In most instances the number of styles is recognized
in the number of the stigmata.
1298. As being the rib of the ovary the style is the last ramuscular
extremity of the stalk, which is resolved into mucus upon the stigma.
1299. Stamen-filament is related to style, as leaf to stalk, thus as
air to earth, as Differencing to Differencizable, as electrism to
chemism or rather nutrition. This is the lower comparison; in a true
sense they are related as light to heat.
1300. The light is the Active, the heat the Passive; light the Moving,
heat the Moveable; light the Vitalizing, heat the Inactive, or that
which becomes vitalized; light the spirit, heat the matter--male and
female principle. Thus are corolla and pistil related to each other.
3. SEED.
1301. The root repeats itself in the interior of the ovary under the
æther-form. The root ascends out of the earth to become an organ of
gravity.
1302. After the leaves have been made independent in the corolla, and
the stalk in the pistil, the root also separates and appears as a free
organ, as _Seed_.
1303. The seeds are necessarily in the interior of the ovary; for the
cellular organ can first appear, after the leaf-and stalk-buds have
opened as corolla and ovarium. The blossom is a bulb, the external
testa or covering of which is the leaf-, the mediate the stalk-, and
lastly, the internal the root-vesicle. The stalk is adherent to the
leaves, the root to the stalk; so also the seeds to the ovary, and this
to the corolla.
1304. The seeds are developed in the ovary under the same relations in
which the root is developed in the earth, namely, in the dark.
1305. The darkness does not allow the chemical body to attain unto
difference; therefore the sap within the capsule must, instead of
separating itself into spiral vessels and leaf-substance, continue to
remain there undivided and without form, i. e. in the condition of
simple granules, or germs of future cells.
1306. The seeds, like the root, are a mass of cells; like it they
contain an accumulation of mucus, but of course more highly-formed,
being separated into flour, starch, acid matter, oil, and such like
substances.
1307. These seminal substances are deposited upon the alkaline, in
opposition to the acid, side of the ovary; just as the root also
represents the alkaline factor in reference to the stalk, in which
appears the formation of acids.
1308. The seeds are the pinnate leaflets of the ovarian leaves, which
continue in the condition of buds. They stand therefore as unclosed
vesicles upon both edges of the carpel, as is particularly distinct in
the legumens.
1309. As both edges are similar to each other, so there can be no ovary
that has fewer than two seeds. In all one-seeded ovaries therefore one
seed has been arrested, a fact that admits too of being demonstrated in
the majority of cases.
1310. Every seed is placed at the extremity of a lateral rib of the
carpel. These lateral ribs are called seed-bearers or _placentæ_. If
such lateral ribs terminate before reaching the edge of the carpel,
then the seeds stand upon the juncture or wall of the carpel. This does
not, however, occur frequently, but only in the Siliquosæ, poppies,
and some others. The elongated lateral rib, whereupon the seed hangs,
is called umbilical cord. It is no peculiar organ, but only the
seed-petiole.
1311. The direction of the seeds is possible in five ways, either
upright and horizontal, transverse, or rising obliquely upwards and
downwards in relation to the axis of the ovary.
1312. Every perfect seed (of Dicotyledons) is none other than a
pentifoliar, involuted, pinnate leaf. The shell of the seed is the
leaf-spathe or _phyllodium_, the two seed-lobes are the two posterior
pinnate leaflets, while the germinal leaflets, or _plumula_, are the
two anterior pinnate leaflets, together with the odd leaflet. The
seed-rib or vascular cord (_raphe_) is continued into the seed-rootlet
or radicle, and this into the petiole of the cotyledons.
1313. Every seed-coat must consist of three integuments; for every
leaf consists of the lower and upper membrane, and of the interjacent
parenchyma, in which the vessels are dispersed. The external
leaf-membrane forms the most hard and coloured covering of the seed
(_testa_), the internal the brown seed-tunic or _pellicula_; between
the two lies the brown fibrous tissue, or desiccated parenchyma with
the vessels.
1314. The hilum is the basis of the bud or of the seed-leaf; the
seed-hole or micropyle is on the apex of the involuted bud, or rather
of the phyllodium, in which the germ lies rolled up.
1315. Umbilicus and micropyle are united with each other by means of
seed or leaf-rib (raphe). Both rarely stand opposite to each other,
so as that the one should be below, the other above; but the apex of
the leaf is usually so involuted that it again reaches the bottom of
the leaf, whereby umbilicus and micropyle come into close and mutual
approximation, as in the beans. The seed-petiole elongates itself
into the seed-rib; this is continued upon the back of the phyllodium
or testa, bends round, and returns again to the umbilicus, so as to
describe a complete circle. The shell of the seed has consequently the
form of the young fern or fern-capsule.
1316. The radicle is the continuation of the seed-rib, which is,
however, dismembered itself, moves off, and thereby causes the
micropyle to be, or, properly speaking, only renders it, free. The
testa or seed-shell is consequently a phyllodium thrown over the germ,
but the micropyle is the upper opening of the bud.
1317. The germ of the seed or embryo, namely, radicle, cotyledons and
plumule, is therefore only the quinary pinnate leaf without the spathe
or testa.
1318. Thus the whole seed, shell and embryo, completely resembles a
pinnate leaf with a phyllodium, as we see it in the umbellate plants,
only it must be thought of as one so involuted, that the fine leaves
adhere reversed in the phyllodium. Seeds may consequently change
into leaves. A seed has therefore been formed also in all its parts
like a papilionaceous corolla. This resemblance speaks moreover
retrogressively, for the petals of the papilionaceous corolla being
viewed only as a single leaf-bud. Seeds may therefore change also into
corollæ. All parts of the seed are thus an unity, a single pinnate
leaf, and it is consequently impossible for them to have been patched
up out of what has been called the seed-ovum, namely, the testa and
embryo, which would come from some other source or out of the pollen.
1319. The seed is the whole plant in miniature: the root being
portrayed in the umbilical cord, and radical leaf in the phyllodium;
stalk in the radicle; caudal leaves in the seed-lobes; ramuscule in the
cotyledonal petiole; ramular leaves in the cotyledons. Seeds may thus
change into an entire plant. The seed is consequently nothing new in
the plant, but the repetition of the same under the relations and forms
of the root.
1320. It is plain that the seeds must always change into the same
plant; for they are indeed nothing else but this. The identity ensuing
upon propagation is accordingly nothing singular and incomprehensible;
it would be so were it otherwise. With the seed the plant has but
reverted again to its primary condition, to the galvanic, mucous
vesicle, out of which in a secondary manner the young plant is
developed like as is the first plant out of the primary vesicle.
1321. The radicle is not therefore root itself, but only emits rootlets.
1322. The germ or the radicle must observe different positions towards
the umbilicus, according as the seed-leaf or the testa has been more or
less involuted, and according as the germ is removed from the micropyle.
1323. The albumen or perisperm is no particular organ, but only the
deposit from the sap, which the inner wall of the testa secretes. The
albumen stands in no organic connexion with the parts of the seed. That
therefore which has become connate with the kernel or nucleus cannot be
albumen.
1324. The arillus can be none other than bud-seeds of the testa,
because it is placed under the phyllodium. It corresponds to the floral
involucrum or bracteal scales.
1325. As the seeds are none other than leaves that have remained
stationary in the condition of root, so must they pass through the
three leaf-stages. There can be therefore only three principal
differences in the seed-formation.
1326. The seeds of plants with reticular leaves consist of several
leaves arranged symmetrically or in pairs. They have necessarily _two_
seed-lobes--Dicotyledones.
1327. The seeds of plants with spathose leaves consist too only of
the latter, i. e. the seed-leaves remain encased in each other. They
have consequently only one seed-lobe, which also incloses only one
plumule--Monocotyledones.
1328. This seed-lobe is a phylloidal leaf, whose parenchyma has been
superabundantly filled with farinaceous matter or flour.
1329. That which is named vitellus can be none other than the
succeeding counter-leaf.
1330. What in the Monocotyledons, at least in most of them, and in
the grasses, is called albumen, is not so, but only the flour of the
seed-lobe.
1331. The germination of these seeds is nothing else than an elongating
of the spathiform seed-lobe into a culm, from the bottom of which
radicles spring forth, as out of a bulb. A monocotyledonous seed is in
its structure none other than a small bulb with undivided coverings.
1332. Lastly, the third form of seeds makes its appearance in those
plants which have only scale-like leaves. The seed-lobe is wanting in
them, and they elongate themselves directly into the plumule or little
stalk--Acotyledones.
1333. They are devoid of the distinction of testa and embryo, because,
on account of the deficiency of genuine leaf-formation, they are
none other than the first. For the embryo is only a small leaf. They
therefore include only albumen or _germinal powder_, as it is correctly
named.
1334. Here belong not merely fungi, fuci, lichens and mosses, but also
the ferns, as being those which have only cells or squamoid leaves.
For the frond with the spiral vessels does not rank in the category of
leaf, but of stalk.
FRUIT.
1335. The fruit is the coalescence or blending of the three parts
of the flower, or the seed, ovarium and corolla. In the flower the
individual perfection of every part of the trunk was completely
attained; the leaves being separated quite freely from the stalk became
corolla; the stalk separated from the leaves and root became pistil;
lastly, the root separated from all, became the seed. In this manner
indeed each organ attained its ratio of perfection; the perfection,
however, of the Whole does not alone consist in the perfection of the
several parts for themselves, but in the union or combination of these
individual perfections. The vegetable trunk, as being a Partial, has
been represented in the parts of the flower, but as a Whole, in the
fruit.
1336. The fruit is therefore the last and most perfect consummation of
the plant, or the whole vegetable trunk repeated as unity.
1337. In the fruit not merely the sum of all vegetable forms is united,
but also that of all vegetable matters. It is the whole vegetable body
repeated mathematically, physically and chemically.
1338. The fruit therefore is also that part of the plant in which all
vegetable bodies have been concentrated into flesh. Now, as the highest
vegetable bodies pass over into the next, and consequently into the
animal kingdom, and are therefore palatable as food, so is the fruit
also in essence the sarcocarp. For this is the directly edible part of
the plant, that e. g. which does not need being cooked.
1339. The nutritious substance of the fruit can be none other than a
highly elevated and analysed kind of mucus, such as starch and gum,
sugar and acids. Flour is that which resembles the root, sugar the
stalk, acids the foliage; therefore flour is in the seed, sugar in the
pistil, and acid in the calyx.
1340. There can be only three kinds of fruit, that constantly accord
with the preponderance of the three parts of the flower, as seed-fruit,
pistil-and corolla-fruit.
1341. The fruit that has the preponderance of the seed, or where the
edible substance resides in the seed, and the ovary itself has become
seed-shaped, is the _Nut_. The nut is the cariopsis that has become
sarcocarp; it is therefore one-seeded--farinaceous sarcocarp.
1342. In the ovarian fruit the ovarium has become demi nut-like, half
corolla-like or fleshy, as in the _Plum_. It is the carpel that has
become sarcocarp--acid sarcocarp.
1343. The fruit, in which the whole ovarium together with the calyx
is edible, is the corolla-fruit, the _Berry_. Only those perfectly
soft fruits are true berries which are inclosed by the calyx, as being
forsooth a part of the blossom. The berry is the siliqua or hollow
capsule that has become sarcocarp. Therefore it has numerous and small
seeds--saccharine sarcocarp.
1344. Finally, these fruits combine to form a common fruit, which
represents the proper synthesis of all parts of the blossom, or in
which seed, ovarium and flower, along with the calyx, have become
sarcocarp. This is the _Apple_, a syncarpus. The apple is the calyx
become sarcocarp, and as it usually incloses several carpels, it is
therefore polycarpal and contains few seeds. It consists of seed,
ovarium and calyx, which have become flesh. The apple, as being an
unopen calyx-fruit, may probably be regarded as the fruit of the trunk.
It furnishes properly drink and food, is the fruit against thirst and
hunger--the universal, alimentary sarcocarp. The apple contains all
the bodies that have been named, viz. flour, acids and sugar. It is
thus chemically also the synthetic fruit, which may be converted into
the whole animal flesh, and thus become a true medium of nutrition. The
nut is only garbage, the plum and berry, cherry and grape, only drinks
or delicacies.
1345. Other vegetable substances, which range lower in chemical
development, as mucus, bitter and colouring matters, with resins, are
associated for the greatest part in root, stalk and leaves.
FRUIT OF THE FLOWERLESS PLANTS.
1346. The flowerless or asexual plants can have no genuine seed or no
embryo. For the genuine seed is the repetition of the blossom under the
idea of root. (Ed. 1st, 1810. § 1564.)
1347. That which has been called germinal powder is no seed or germ,
but only albumen or perisperm. It has no seed-petiole, has only been
exuded out of what has been called the wall of the capsule, and
exhibits in its composition no seed-lobes. (Ed. 1st. § 1586.)
1348. What is termed capsule in the Acotyledones is none other than the
seed-shell, whereupon it follows of itself, that the so-called seeds
can have no umbilical cords or seed-petioles. (Ed. 1st; 1810. § 1573.)
1349. The capsules of ferns are involuted like most dicotyledonous
seeds. The ring corresponds to the seed-rib or raphe, the fissure
to the seed-aperture or micropyle. The involuted fern-capsule is a
repetition of the involuted fern-frond. The little heaps of capsules or
sori are consequently not pollen, but a nest of seeds surrounded by an
indusium or veil, which, probably, corresponds to the ovary.
1350. The capsule of mosses is an antetype of monocotyledonous seeds;
it is a spathe-leaf with the lateral suture; it springs up in a tubular
manner similar to grass-leaves, that free themselves from the nodes of
the culm.
1351. The hollow columella, which likewise contains germinal powder,
is an internal spathe, which corresponds to the germinal leaf of
grasses.
1352. The oral teeth are the dissevered parallel strips of vessels in
the culm and leaf of the Monocotyledons.
1353. The urn-supporting pedicel is the seed-petiole or umbilical cord.
1354. The calyptra probably corresponds to the arillus and thus to the
bud-scales; or possibly to the indusium of the ferns, and thus to the
ovary.
1355. The leaf-roses would consequently be the involucral leaves of the
moss-stalk; the moss-stalk itself a peduncle or flower-stalk; so that
in the upper involucral leaves rudiments might indeed appear of stamina.
1356. In the lichens and fuci the whole trunk is none other than
seed-shell.
1357. In the fungi, the antetype of the Acotyledons, it may be almost
said that the whole stem is nothing else but albumen, the external
layers of which only cling together in a membranaceous manner, and
represent a kind of seed-shell. The fungus is an albumen-body,
which has coagulated out of vegetable juices. In the fungus, seed,
seed-vessel, ovary, blossom, foliage and trunk have become blended into
one.
1358. In a perfect blossom the albumen is therefore the repetition of
a fungus; the acotyledonous seed that of lichen; the monocotyledonous
seed-vessel that of a moss; the dicotyledonous, however, is the
repeated fern. It may be also said that the albumen were fungus; the
germ, lichen; the seed-vessel, moss; the ovary perhaps, a fern, namely,
its indusium.
II.--_PHYTO-PHYSIOLOGY._
1359. The life of the plant consists in the co-operation of its
functions. The representation of these functions is the vegetable
physiology or the theory of vegetation.
1360. _Vegetation depends first of all upon the two principal
antagonisms of the plant, or those between the tracheal and cellular
systems, or between the stem-and rootsystems, sun and planet, air and
water with earth, light and matter, electrism and chemism._
1361. The functions divide into those of the _æther-organs_--_blossom_,
and the planetary organs--_stem_.
I.--FUNCTIONS OF THE TRUNK.
1362. The functions of the trunk are those of the tissues, systems
and members; thus first of the cells, vessels or ducts and tracheæ;
secondly, of the bark, liber and wood; lastly, of the root, stalk and
foliage.
1. _Facts._
1363. The phenomena to be regarded in plants bear relation to their
constituent parts, and the changes or preliminary incidents which they
undergo.
A. _Constituent Parts._
The chemical constituent parts of vegetables are inorganic and organic.
a. INORGANIC BODIES.
_Elements._
1364. The plant contains all the _primitive bodies_; carbon, oxygen,
hydrogen and nitrogen. The carbon forms the principal mass, and almost
alone constitutes its solid parts. The nitrogen is only present in
small quantity, being, as it were, a trace only of the future animal
kingdom.
1365. In the plant all the _elements_ are also active, as the æther,
which, through the gravitation of the root, strives towards the middle
point or centre of the earth. The light, which imparts the general
polarity and decomposition, as well as produces colours. The latter
appear to reside in the starch-flour. The heat, that sustains the
indifference, promotes the evaporation and the course of the sap, as
also protects the plant from being killed by frost or cold. The air
that penetrates through the spiral vessels to all parts, and is also
met with occasionally in the hollow stalks, the interstices and cells
of the pith and cuticle. It imparts the process of oxydation. The
water is the proper mother of the plant, being the medium by which
the nutrition is imparted. It contains in a state of absorption some
hydrogen and nitrogen, a larger amount of oxygen, and abundance of
carbonic acid; besides different salts, mucus, sugar, and acids. The
earth, as element, bestows upon the plant a firm station, so that the
water-and air-organs continue separate from each other.
_Minerals or Earths._
1367. The plant is also a totality in reference to the _earths_. It
contains all the mineral classes, and from each of these indeed the
principal or fundamental minerals. It can therefore only thrive in a
soil which represents the whole mineral kingdom. Among the earths the
siliceous earth is very frequently found in plants, and especially
in the graminaceous kinds. This, having been dissolved in the earth
by potash and the rich supply even of carbonic acid, appears to be
absorbed or imbibed by the plant. The argillaceous earth is scarcely
met with in the plant itself; but from imbibing and storing up water
for the consumption of the plant, it is without doubt its best and most
necessary soil. The talcose earth is rarely found contained in plants;
it, however, keeps the soil slacker, by dividing into laminæ, and being
present for the most part as mica in sand. The calcareous earth is a
more essential constituent part of plants, and is found therein in
tolerable quantity, usually combined with phosphoric or carbonic acid.
Of the salts, all plants contain a fair proportion of common salt and
potash, combined too with carbonic acid; soda with saccharic or oxalic
acid; probably also ammonia. Of the acids, carbonic acid appears to be
alone contained in a free state in vegetable sap; the other elemental
and mineral acids are united to alkalies, talcose and calcareous
earths. As regards the Inflammables, almost the whole plant consists of
carbon, but contains also some sulphur. The metals are represented by
iron, which occurs in all plants.
b. ORGANIC VEGETABLE BODIES.
1368. These must be regarded as the repetition of the inorganic bodies.
The alcohol, which does not indeed occur ready formed in the plant, but
is developed out of the sugar, certainly corresponds to the æther. The
ætherial or volatile oils, and the balsams and resins that are thence
formed, correspond with the air. The mucus, gelatine, albumen, and
sugar correspond to water; the wood, gum, starch and vegetable mould,
to the earth. Of the organic salts, plants contain tannin, with azetic,
benzoic, mucic, gelatic, saccharic, tartaric, citric, malic, oxalic,
tannic, oleic, isatic, and hydrocyanic acids. The alkaline bodies are
pungent, bitter, stupefying, and saponaceous; the fixed or greasy
oils, the wax and the vegetable butters, are to be regarded as organic
Inflammables; the colouring matters, as the organic ores.
1369. These bodies intermixed form the compound vegetable matters. What
has been called vegetable sap is for plants, what the blood is for
animals. It consists for the greatest part of water and mucus, starch,
sugar, acids, and salts. It passes over into vinous and then into
acetous fermentation. The starch-granules appear to form in the cells.
1370. To the secreted saps belong the coloured milky juices present
in particular vessels, and consisting for the most part of water with
resins, as in the celandine and spurge. The particular saps, especially
those of the fruits, are very composite, consisting for the most
part either of mucus, sugar and acids, or occasionally of gelatine
and albumen. Solid compound matters are almost universally made up
of flour, which consists principally of starch and gum; or they are
furthermore mucus in the roots and seeds. The excreted or separated
matters, which no longer interpose in the vegetable process, are
the etherial oils, resins, fixed oils, colouring matters, poisonous
substances, gum, tannin, nectar-juices, and even water.
B. _Preliminary Events._
a. WROUGHT BY EXTERNAL INFLUENCE.
1371. The influence of the elements produces different phenomena in
the plant. I have felt constantly more inclined to consider, that not
merely the descent of the root, but even the ascent of the stalk was
simply to be viewed as a mechanical event, or one forsooth effected by
gravity. The roots obey under all circumstances the gravity and would
grow as far as the centre of the earth, were they to meet with no
impediment; and there they would follow the revolution of the earth,
and consequently become spirally convoluted upon themselves. It is
almost beyond doubt that the water, which sinks downwards and, as it
were like that in stalactites, invariably rigidifies or hardens at the
radical capillaries, is heavier in the root. The cause of this greater
weight depends upon the mucus not being decomposed.
1372. The straight ascent of the stalk also depends upon nothing
else than gravity. The upper drops of mucus become lighter by means
of greater heat and by decomposition in light and air, and they are
therefore compressed by the heavier in the upward direction. It is
always such a small drop upon the summit, which hardens into its
uppermost cell. The stalk, therefore, grows upwards through the same
forces and in the same manner, as the air-bubbles ascend in a glass
of beer. The cause of their becoming lighter resides certainly in the
vital process, which nevertheless effects in this respect nothing else
than the extension or increase; but yet the cause of the ascent is
naught else than the gravity.
1373. The _light_ likewise acts upon the direction of plants and
especially that of their leaves; not simply from its promoting growth
by elevation of temperature and by decomposition, but obviously in a
mechanical manner also; for not only do the branches of plants in a
green-house grow towards the window, but most leaves turn themselves
the whole day in obedience to the course of the sun. This turning
must, nevertheless, have one and the same kind of cause with the
growing towards light; it also is only a conatus or effort unto growth.
The upper leaf-cells, being illuminated by the sun, become lighter, and
are therefore directed at once, like the apices of the branches, toward
the influence of light. The cells that stand perpendicularly upon the
surface of the leaf are to be regarded as branches conjoined by growth.
1374. The _sleep of plants_ depends also upon the same influence of the
light. The upper leaf-cells sleep during the night, while the lower
cells, especially those of the petiole, fill and consequently bend the
latter upwards. The sleep of the flower must have the same cause. As
likewise the alternating motion of many leaves, as in the Mimosæ.
1375. The motion also performed by the staminal filaments towards the
pistil must finally depend upon this unequal replenishment of the
external and internal cells.
1376. The coloration of the parts of plants is a result of the
decomposition of the starch-granules in the cells by the agency of
light.
1377. The operation of the _heat_ is more intelligible than any other.
That which is to move and separate itself, must have a certain degree
of extension, or must be fluid, namely, aquiform. In a cold temperature
the upper saps, not becoming warmer than the lower, are consequently
not lighter, and on that account also do not ascend upwards. The mortal
freezing of trees descends from above downwards. In other respects
plants have, like animals, a self-inherent, though very feeble, process
of heat. Germination proves this, in cases where many seeds lie upon
each other.
1378. The air acts also mechanically and physically upon plants,
by causing motion of the solid parts and by promoting evaporation.
Electricity is without doubt active in the spring of the year, and
evokes the antagonism between the fabric of the stem and root.
1379. The physical operation of water consists indeed, for the greatest
part, in its preserving the solid parts in a supple or pliant state.
Its principal office is, however, to convey nourishment to the plant.
1380. The earths act beneficially only upon plants, if they have been
all mixed with each other. Mineral salts occurring in moderate quantity
in the soil promote growth; alkalies and acids are injurious thereunto.
The same holds good of Inflammables and metallic limes.
b. BY INTERNAL ACTIVITY.
1381. That the plant imbibes water, and this indeed in great quantity,
by its whole surface is a well-ascertained fact; but it has been by
no means equally determined whether it obtains its nourishment simply
through the water, or directly also from the air, e. g. the carbon, as
well as the nitrogen, from the carbonic acid. The principal imbibition,
however, takes place through the root; but experiments that have been
made upon this subject leave it doubtful, whether in this case it is
simply mucus, extract from the humus or vegetable mould, or simply
carbonic acid that has been absorbed.
1382. It is moreover a fact that the green parts of plants exposed to
direct sun-light consume or take in carbonic acid, and develop or give
out oxygen; on the contrary, during the night, and even in cloudy or
gloomy days, they absorb oxygen and exhale or develop carbonic acid.
Now, as there are far more gloomy or at least cloudy than clear days,
it thus becomes evident that far more oxygen has been taken up, than
separated, from the air. During germination oxygen gas is consumed and,
on the other hand, carbonic acid developed.
1383. The saps ascend upwards, and chiefly indeed, in the liber; on its
passage different substances forming from it, which appear especially
in the fruit in greatest proportion and variety.
2. _Processes._
1384. The tissues of plants form three formations, which must
be similar in their functions, and can only exhibit subordinate
differences. The cell-formation is displayed in the cellular tissue,
in the bark and root. The vascular formation in the vascular tissue,
in the liber and stalk. The tracheal formation in the tracheal tissue,
the wood and the leaves. There can accordingly be only three principal
functions in the vegetable stem, and of these each will display minor
differences.
A. _Cellular Processes._
a. ROOT-PROCESS--ABSORPTION.
1385. As the root is the cellular organ proper, so in it principally
resides the water-process or the commencement of chemical elaboration
and analysis. Now the chemism in an organic body is called digestion.
1386. The root is the mouth or pharynx of the plant, and is therefore
principally concerned with absorption. Its process is therefore the
formation of mucus, or as it were of salivation. The root cannot,
however, create mucus, as it was created at the conclusion of the
earth-metamorphosis in the sea; it can absorb it or in the highest
degree compound it out of the constituent parts.
1387. The process of the formation of mucus is a process of
putrefaction; the function of the root consists accordingly in
supporting a constant process of putrefaction. The soil in which the
root stands must contain substances susceptible of, and the conditions
necessary to, putrefaction. These substances are organic matters and
water; the conditions heat and access of air. Such a soil is called
humus or mould. In a pure, dry earth, no root can thrive.
1388. Carbon, from its being the earthy body, is the principal one in
the formation of mucus, and the basis also of the vegetable bodies.
A root can develop itself, if it stand only in a soil such as the
calcareous, which contains carbon and water. The calcareous soil is
as it were an original mould. It is probable that the calcareous earth
is constantly decomposed by the root and its carbon absorbed. The
calcareous earth is again neutralized by the carbonic acid of the water
and air.
1389. There can be no doubt that the root also abstracts carbon from
these elements, and converts it into mucus, or probably separates
it from carbonic acid. The mucus approximates the animal nature, so
that the root in its constituent parts, in its smell, and even in its
structure, exhibits animal properties; animal substances therefore are
also the best nutritive media of plants.
1390. That which putrefies most easily is the best manure.
1391. Through the process of putrefaction many kinds of antagonisms
and attractions, by which the absorption takes place through the
root-filaments, are aroused.
1392. The root has not merely one orifice for absorbing, but it imbibes
upon the whole surface, from its being still immersed in the chemical
menstruum. The integument of animals does the same.
b. BARK-PROCESS--EVAPORATION.
1393. The bark, as an organ of cellular tissue, which is placed wholly
in the outward direction, must principally exercise the process of
absorption and evaporation. Now, as there are two kinds of bark, a
root-and a stalk-bark, or a water-and air-bark, so upon the former
will the business of absorption chiefly devolve, on the latter that of
evaporation.
1394. As the bark of the stalk possesses stomata, which are wanting
in that of the root, so is this a probable reason for these apertures
being organs of evaporation. This opinion is corroborated also by
aquatic leaves being without stomata, while they occur in the leaves
exposed to air.
1395. Meanwhile the stalk is of a twofold character; it is only the
root that has ascended into the air. As an aerial root it absorbs.
Without doubt the stalk absorbs the same as the root, namely, moisture
from the air and carbonic acid. Experiments prove it.
c. CELL-PROCESS--DIGESTION.
1396. The cells are the crystallized drops of mucus, the fundamental
mass of the vegetable and consequently the water, which converts
itself into the Earthy, or wherein the Solid has been elaborated and
precipitated. They construct the Solid that has been absorbed into new
cells. But the Solid can only assume other forms by means of water. The
solution, however, with mixture of bodies and formation into globules
is digestion. The cells are thus the stomachs of which the plant has
millions like mouths.
1397. The bodies absorbed must move in the cells; for chemical solution
and mixture, being itself nothing else than separation and union of
atoms, is consequently motion. In a single cell the motion must be upon
all sides, because the atoms are attracted and repelled from all points
of the cell-wall. In cells, however, which are united with others and
therefore subjected to longitudinal polarity, this motion must be
performed in accordance with the axis of the cells.
1398. This motion proceeds to and fro, because the extremities of the
cells have different polarities, and therefore repel the same atoms,
which they have before attracted. In the cells the mucus appears to be
converted into starch-granules.
B. _Vascular Processes._
a. _Vessel-process--Conveyance of Sap._
1399. The vessels or intercellular passages conduct the sap, or
the water of the plant. Their function is therefore the continued
conveyance of the sap that has been absorbed from the root, and
rendered solid or consistent by the evaporation going on in the bark
and elaborated by the cells.
1400. The vessels of plants are notwithstanding to be compared with the
lymphatic vessels of animals, in so far also as these are distributed
throughout the whole body, and convey the sap simply in one direction
not in a circle.
1401. As the passages between all the cells are in all directions,
so the vegetable saps or fluids flow in all directions, and not to
one centre as in the animal. Plants have no heart. The sap pursues a
tolerably rapid course in the vessels. A fading or drooping cabbage,
two feet in length, can gradually become erect in a few minutes after
being put to soak in water. In other respects the course of the sap in
the vessels may be seen in many plants under the microscope.
b. _Liber-process--Mixture of Sap._
1402. In the liber, as being the mass of intercellular passages,
the sap contained in the vessels principally accumulates, as in the
thoracic duct of animals; in it the matters have not been simply
conveyed and dissolved, but also mixed and converted into true
vegetable sap, into blood.
1403. The tubes of the liber are those by which the chemical life is
sustained.
c. _Stalk-process--Secretion._
1404. The stalk is the root planted in air, and consequently its
process is the differenced process of putrefaction, in which the mucus
becomes further evolved.
1405. The analysis chiefly occurs in the stalk; the mucus, or rather
the starch, becoming converted into sugar and acids.
1406. Sugar is the mucus of the stalk, and is found in every vegetable
sap, especially that of such plants as are characterized by the systems
of the stalk, and have not yet attained the formation of the reticular
leaf, as the Monocotyledones, e. g. the grasses.
1407. The sugar originates from a process of fermentation; the process
of the stalk must consequently be regarded as a vital _process of
fermentation_.
1408. The process of fermentation is that of putrefaction carried
on in the air, or the polar process of fermentation. Both processes
consequently observe a polar relation towards each other.
1409. The sugar-process passes over finally into acidification.
1410. The _Inflammables_, as the ætherial oils, balsams, and resins,
are formed in the antagonism of the sugar or of the _acids_. Here
also belong most of the peculiar vegetable matters, as the milky
saps, colouring matters, medicinally active bodies, poisons, and the
alkaloids.
C. _Tracheal-processes._
a. _Leaf-process--Inspiration._
1411. In the foliage the woody rings have issued freely into the air,
in order that they may offer their whole surface to its influence, and
thus become electrified and oxydized.
1412. The leaf is the free, external organ of respiration to the plant;
it is its _lung_. Through the leaf the air, and chiefly its oxygen, is
transferred into the plant, just as it is through the lungs into the
animal.
1413. The leaves take in oxygen gas; this is their _essential_
function, and not that of exhaling it.
1414. The leaves _only_ exhale oxygen gas when exposed to light. The
development of oxygen in the plant is accordingly a light-and not an
air-process. In consequence of this the leaves give out oxygen gas only
during the day, but during the night and even upon gloomy days, where
not the light but only the air is active, they take in oxygen and give
out carbonic acid.
1415. The light develops the oxygen gas out of the plant in a perfectly
inorganic manner, like as from every water, that can be set in a
process of tension. _Rumford_ has developed by simple glass tubes
oxygen gas out of water. The oxygen gas of plants is therefore a
result only of the decomposition of water in an inorganic manner by the
agency of light, or virtually the separation only of the oxygen that is
clinging to the water.
1416. Through the process of respiration in the plant carbonic acid has
been formed and excreted. For the mucus becomes oxydized, and thereby
the process also of fermentation, the product of which is carbonic
acid, is promoted.
1417. The respiratory process of the leaves is the perfected process of
fermentation in the stalk, in which finally, namely, in the fruit-saps,
the separation of both the products of fermentation, the vinous and
acetic, is prepared.
1418. Just as acids and sugar originate in the stalk, so in the foliage
does their electrical antagonism, or the ætherial oils and perfumes.
Sweet scents or perfumes are properties of the air, and therefore
originate also with the aerial process. This is retrospectively a proof
that the leaf-process is the respiratory process.
1419. Through the leaves, with which the whole surface of the earth
is covered, the planet respires, and thereby the surface of the earth
principally obtains its electricity.
1420. Vegetation must therefore effect an important change in the
earth's electricity. The earth must be differently polarized after, to
what it was before, the fall of the leaf.
1421. Thereby the northern hemisphere is differently polarized to the
southern, because the latter has less soil than the former.
b. _Wood-process--Nutrition._
1422. As most of the spiral vessels are collected together in the body
of wood, and finally in the leaves issue forth quite free and naked
into the air, so must the wood conduct for the most part air into the
plant. The polarization of the other systems, of the liber and the
bark, must therefore proceed from the body of wood.
1423. The greatest amount of induration must originate in the body of
the spiral vessel, because in it the process of oxydation takes place
in the most active manner. From the same cause the process of nutrition
must also be supported by it in the most powerful manner. The wood is
the chief seat of nutrition.
c. _Tracheal-process--Oxydation._
1424. The structure of the spiral vessels, their resemblance to the
tracheæ or air-tubes of insects, their distribution throughout the
whole trunk, the air they contain which is found decidedly free in
the plant, leave no doubt that the tracheæ are air-conveying organs,
and consequently have, like the arteries in animals, the process of
respiration directly intrusted to them.
1425. Now through the process of respiration the general polarity, and
consequently the cause or fundamental principle of all life, enters the
plant.
1426. The tracheæ penetrate or traverse the whole plant from the apex
of the root to that of the flower. Their operation must therefore also
extend through the whole plant.
1427. The tracheal system must also govern the plant by polarity, and
thus in an immaterial manner.
1428. This polarity acts simply in the direction of the plant's
longitude, not transversely, like the material fundamental processes.
1429. The tracheæ impart in a spiritual manner the antagonism between
the root and fabric of the stem.
1430. As the tracheæ are, or constitute, the highest system of the
plant, so must it be them upon which the light principally acts. The
material processes of plants are kept in activity by the antagonism of
light.
1431. By this only are the instantaneous changes, which follow upon the
influence of light or section of the spiral vessels, to be explained.
Upon this, therefore, depends the instantaneous elevation of the
processes under the influence of a ray of light, and their depression,
if only a cloud pass in front of and obscure the sun; hence too does
the plant die, so to speak, upon the very spot, if the spiral fibres
within the liber be cut through, but the latter left uninjured.
1432. The liber no longer conveys any sap to the divided tracheæ,
solely because it has lost the condition to be affected by the
light-polarity. On the contrary, a plant does not die so soon, if the
liber be cut through, but the spiral vessels preserved. The spiral
fibres conditionate consequently the motion and the excitation of the
organic processes.
1433. _The spiral fibres are therefore, apart even from their function
of respiration, or rather because this is the highest vegetable
function, that for the plant, which the nerves are for the animal._
1434. The tracheæ of plants do not ramify like the nerves of animals;
but if they divide, they separate only as fascicles, which have been
liberated from their origin. The tracheæ commence too directly in
the mass of cells, wherever that may happen to be, and thus become
what governs an organ, exactly like the animal nerves. Their analogy
is greatest with the sympathetic nerves. The tracheæ, just as in the
animal kingdom, are the mediators, not the founders, of vegetable life.
1435. The principle of motion must reside in the tracheæ, provided that
higher, and not merely chemical movements, occur in the plant.
1436. These movements must and can only exist in those organs which
consist almost entirely of spiral vessels, and thus only in the highest
organs.
1437. Such are the leaves and the corollæ. Is it wished to compare the
corolla, apart from its sexual relation, with an organ in animals, it
can only be contrasted with the highest nervous organ. The corolla is
the brain of plants, that which corresponds to light, but which here
remains stationary upon the sexual stage. It may be said that what is
sex in the plant, becomes brain in the animal, or the brain is only the
animal sex.
1438. The most general function of the brain is, however, feeling or
touch combined with motion. If the corolla could attain to a sensorial
function, it would be to that of touch.
1439. It is conducted thereto; but at the instant, when it is indulged
in feeling the mental capacity of the animal, it sinks down exhausted
and dies. It is punished for the risk that has been run in wishing to
attain unto self-cognition.
1440. Motion and touch are revealed only in the highest organs of
the plant, or in the stamina. The filament moves upon the pistil
and touches it with the pollen, which at that instant, however, is
scattered in small particles, and leaves behind the filament in a
withered state.
1441. The motion performed by the filaments appears to be a simple
operation of the irritability in the tracheæ that have become soft,
without undergoing chemical decomposition, but probably by sudden
influx of sap, induced by the tension of air in the spiral vessels.
1442. In the highest, or the pinnate, leaves, movements, which are
probably a result of the tracheal irritability, also occur, but
are devoid the object of coming into contact with, or of touching,
anything. The sensitive plants, as Hedysarum gyrans, move their leaves,
not from any intrinsic determination upon their part, but in accordance
with an antecedent stimulus, and thus not voluntarily, but probably
through the influence merely of polar tension. The movements of leaves
are convulsions of plants, although too an afflux of sap be caused or
induced by the stimulus.
SAP-MOTION.
_Galvanic Process._
1443. _The motion of the sap is imparted through the antagonism of the
respiratory and digestive processes._ For these two processes are the
combination of the Chemical with the Electric, which is the galvanism.
1444. The galvanic poles attract and repel the fluidity; thus the
vegetable sap is attracted by the root and by the stalk. But the
differencing or the oxygen pole is the stronger of the two. The
determining principle of the movement of the sap resides consequently
in the stalk, and the chief direction of the sap-motion tends upwards.
1445. At times, when the air-polarity is elevated, the sap also ascends
more rapidly. As in summer, upon clear warm days. It ascends slowly
upon gloomy and chill days. That in this also light and heat are
playing their parts, is self-intelligible. Thereby the upper particles
of sap become lighter and ascend, being pressed upwards by the lower
and colder particles. As they are nevertheless by no means changed,
this is a proof that, during the time so employed, polar forces also
act upon them.
1446. But the root has also the endeavour to attract the sap; but
as its pole is feebler in character, the stalk draws the sap from
the ultimate extremities of the root into itself. If accordingly the
polarity of the air becomes weaker, while the plant is losing its
leaves or the organs of polarization; so is it easy to imagine why the
motion of the sap becomes slower. As, however, the aerial polarity is
always stronger than that of the earth, the sap must thus in winter
also take the same, or upward, direction.
1447. A fall or descent of the sap can therefore never take place
abstractedly forsooth from the root, in which it sinks by its own
gravity. How a part of a plant, e. g. a twig, could continue alive,
were the sap to have fallen or receded from it, is not to be conceived.
It does not follow from what has been just stated, that movements of
sap should not take place in all directions, and consequently too
downwards; they must indeed occur rather than otherwise, and that
indeed upon all sides; only the principal track or course of the sap
must always pass in the direction upwards.
1448. The movement of the sap consists simply in an ascent and
impulsion of its particles upon all sides, but without any
_circulation_. A circulation would only be possible if the plant were
an organism disengaged from the elements; but as the earth and air
belong to its organization; it thus necessarily oscillates between
both, and its movements also can only be oscillations of a similar
intervening character.
1449. There are consequently no arteries and veins, and still less a
heart in plants, as some have striven to make out.
1450. The vessels of plants are most properly to be compared with the
lymphatic vessels of animals, the fluid or sap of which also tends from
all parts towards one summit, namely, the lungs, while still at times
retrogressive movements also seem to occur.
1451. The vegetable sap does not move in a straight line upwards, but
in all directions, to the right and left, in a zigzag manner, and so
on. This is proved by two incisions being made in a branch opposite to
each other. The motion of the sap in the plant is more an impulsion of
the sap toward all sides, with a predominance in the direction upwards,
than a rapid current as in the blood. If we reflect that the motion
of the sap when seen under the microscope and then magnified several
hundred times, still only resembles a gentle rippling of small drops,
it thus becomes clear that the true current or flow occurs only in
a very tardy manner. Wherever therefore in the plant the process of
differencialization may be brought into play, there the sap is impelled.
1452. Through the polarization of the sap the cells also become polar
towards each other, and then even the cell-walls, whereby the cellular
sap with its mucous granules is kept in constant motion. The theory
of the motion of sap has not consequently been based upon the theory
of capillary tubules; nor is heat alone the cause of its ascent; nor
the empty space, which originates superiorly by evaporation; nor
electricity in an inorganic sense.
II. FUNCTIONS OF THE FLORAL-ORGANS.
1453. These functions correspond to those of the light, heat, and
gravity in the corolla, pistil and seed. The corolla irradiates, the
pistil gives out heat, the seed sinks like the earth towards the centre.
1. _Function of the Corolla._
FERTILIZATION.
1454. As in the vegetable trunk the principle function has been the
antagonism between the aerial and the terrestriaqueous plant, so must
the same function be repeated in the corresponding organs of the
blossom. It oscillates in the principal antagonism between the corolla
and pistil, which is the antagonism of leaf and stem, that of electrism
and chemism, of light and body, of spirit and matter.
1455. The pollen electrifies, animates, or inspirits the ovarium, by
which means it becomes stimulated to the development of seeds. Without
this animating influence the seed had not been developed.
1456. This relation, whereby through the balance of an antagonism,
a whole organism has been evoked into life, is called the _sexual
relation_.
1457. The sex is consequently the antagonism between spirit and
matter, light and mass, æther and the terrestrial elements, sun and
planet, between electrism and chemism, that has been represented in an
organism as totality. In sex consequently the primary antagonism of the
world, or that of spirit and matter, centre and periphery, has been
organically represented.
1458. The sex has hence from the beginning been established and
prophesied; manifests itself also under diverse forms in the Organic,
but becomes first individualized in an organic body. This is the lofty
sense or signification of the sexual relation, that in it the Spiritual
and Material pair together, and thereby sprout forth or germinate into
a whole world. In sex the mystery of creation lies concealed.
1459. What is producing the fruit is called the _female_, that which
awakes production, the _male_.
1460. Mascularity is the spirit of the world, feminality the matter
which becomes animated by the former; mascularity is the light of the
word, which illuminates the feminality, and it is pregnant; mascularity
is the electricity of the world, which arouses the female chemism unto
galvanic circulation. By the male the female becomes animated; before
this it is dead and devoid the differentialization, which is necessary
to every action.
1461. Impregnation is a simple act of light upon the matter, an
_irradiation_, as it was termed, with such an exalted appreciation
of its significance, by the ancients. The male imparts nothing in
impregnation but the _solar ray_, or _fluid nervous mass, in its
semen_, which awakes, animates, and inspirits the quiescent female. The
female supplies or furnishes all the Material or, as in the plant, the
fruit. In other respects it is not to be understood, as if no material
whatever had been imparted by the male, but only that it is not the
matter as such, which the male gives the female, that becomes fruit;
but that the tension which resides in male semen, evokes at the same
time, as by a process of contagion or fermentation, a similar tension
in the female.
1462. The process of tension resides originally in the male, because he
is related or akin to the light; but the female first obtains the light
through the male.
1463. Impregnation is an excitation by the electrical, of the
slumbering chemical, process. The pregnancy is consequently an
uninterrupted chemical process.
1464. The female is the first and lies deeper in the developmental
history of the planet (but not in the creation), just as the digestive
process is prior or antecedent to the respiratory.
1465. In the truest sense is feminality co-ordinated with the
digestive, the mascularity with the respiratory, system. The female
is (organically considered) abdomen, the male, thorax. Pregnancy
is a sexual process of digestion, impregnation a sexual process of
respiration. In impregnation the female respires the male, whereby it
receives into itself a thoracic function, becomes itself male, i. e.
is then capable of producing something out of itself. Now, the female
produces a fruit, which is synonymous with both principles.
1466. The semen is the fruit of the male. The male is always pregnant,
and that indeed by virtue of his own power. This power is deficient in
the female, which does not possess the light in itself, but only the
elemental bodies that are ready and susceptible of form.
1467. The anthers are the male organs, the pollen is the semen. The
pistils are the female organs, the seed-granules are properly speaking,
the _germ_.
1468. The pollen is a most highly differenced, electrical product; the
seed-granule a wholly indifferent, and tranquil mucous mass. The pollen
falls upon the stigma of the pistil, and irradiation has taken place;
the material fruit-capsule gains thereby so much polarity, that saps
enough ascend, in order to develop the germless seed-vesicles.
1469. It is quite unnecessary for the pollen, with its sap or gas,
to be materially conveyed through the style to the seed. It is only
requisite for the style to be excited, dualized, electrified, and then
it has life enough of its own. But it does not follow, because it is
unnecessary for the sap of the floral dust or pollen to reach the
seed-granules, that it cannot or ought not to reach thereunto. In many
plants the pollen-tube does actually reach there and penetrate through
the micropyle. In many styles it is still held as impossible, for the
pollen-tube to penetrate through them to the seeds. The pollen-sap
indeed simply evokes on the apex of the seed (upon the summit of the
lorical rib, through whose liberation the micropyle originates) the
vital process, which, without this stimulus, would perish. Thereby a
new cell is secreted, from whence the germ is developed.
IRRITABILITY--MOTION.
1470. In impregnation the heaven is married to the earth; for then the
spirit descends, and does not esteem itself too highly to become flesh.
Impregnation is the highest immaterial action of the plant.
1471. If, therefore, the irritability of the plant at any time, or
but once only, makes its appearance independently, it must be in the
sexual organs, and in the moments of impregnation. Impregnation ensues,
when the two mundane principles of the plant, light and matter, have
attained, as corolla and fruit, to the highest pitch of perfection;
then the tension of the spiral vessels ranks so high, that they
exercise their function independently of what is terrestrial in the
plant, _move_ themselves in the male filaments, touch the female organ,
and die in this their highest effort.
1472. Thus has it only been conceded to the plant to be, in the instant
of impregnation, an animal and enjoy animal passion.
2. _Function of the Ovarium._
1473. The ovary, by its own power, is in a condition to draw towards
it the chemical saps from out the stem, and as it were by its own heat
to thrust new buds from its leaf-ribs, namely, the seed-pellicles or
testæ. It has not, however, strength sufficient to put forth also the
leaf-work, namely, the embryo, upon the apex of the seed-shell. It
requires for this purpose the stimulus of the floral pollen. If the
plant is very rich in sap, the ovary is so likewise, and converts
itself into fruit or sarcocarp. As a rule, therefore, trees only bear
a crop of fruit. If also the impregnation is less perfect, the force
of the sap continues to remain inherent in the ovarian leaves; they
become rich in sap, fleshy, and likewise fruity in character; trees,
therefore, with imperfect or separated blossoms, as the Amentaceæ,
Urticaceæ, Euphorbiaceæ, Papilionaceæ, Terebinthaceæ, and Rosaceæ,
usually bring forth a crop of fruit.
1474. A stronger degree of refinement appears in these fruit-saps than
in the saps of the stem, because corolla and seeds range closer to
each other. They are therefore more varied and richer in substance.
The fruit-substances range usually upon the side of the water or the
salts, while those of the seed range upon the side of the earth or the
Inflammables. The substances of the seed are flour and oil, those of
the fruit sugar and acids; the former supplies food, the latter drink.
1475. Seed and ovary stand therefore in antagonism, like earth and
water.
3. _Function of the Seed_.
GERMINATION.
1476. The seed is the plant contracted upon its centre, it is the heavy
mineral mass, which can only undergo changes by the operation of the
other elements, like as it arrived only at completion by the operation
of the floral pollen. This acts upon it when within the dry ovary,
like the water and oxygen in the dry earth. These changes are its
development or germination.
1477. All the planetary elements belong to germination, and to growth
the Cosmical also with all its actions. To germination belongs earth,
water, and air; to growth, light, heat, and gravity; with all the four
mineral classes also, such as earth, salt, Inflammable, and metal.
The plant contains silicious and calcareous earth, salts, coal with
sulphur, and lastly, iron.
1478. Germination is the disjunctive emergence wrought by means of
moisture, heat and oxydation in the processes of decomposition and
fermentation. No seed germinates in irrespirable kinds of air.
1479. The cotyledons or seed-lobes are the synthesis of the two
processes; they are at once root and leaf, therefore resolvable into
mucus, and may yet become green.
1480. In germination the elemental bodies of the root-and
stalk-polarity directly emerge; the mucus or the flour separates into
alcaline gum, that seeks the darkness, and into acid sugar, which
elevates itself into the illuminated air.
GROWTH.
1481. Growth is none other than continued germination. The sap being
polarized by the air becomes of necessity decomposed. One part
evaporates as carbonic acid and water, the other coagulates into
oxydized mucus or into cell-walls.
1482. Growth proceeds directly from the process of digestion and
respiration, while its polar organs constantly remove further from each
other.
1483. Properly speaking the digestive and respiratory processes are
none other than growth, since both separate from each other. That,
which originates between them, is the process of nutrition, the
vascular system.
1484. Growth oscillates between the process of decomposition and that
of fermentation; it is an uninterrupted fermentation.
FALL OF THE LEAF.
1485. If every pole of the plant has been perfected in an isolated
manner, it has thus become identical with the air, and the aerial
process ceases.
1486. With the cessation of the aerial process, the respiratory organ
must also die off or perish.
1487. The decadence, or falling off, of the leaves is the result of the
tension having been abrogated between them and the stem; it is a death
by suffocation.
1488. The fall of the leaf therefore occurs in the autumn, or after the
fruit is matured.
DURATION OF LIFE.
1489. The age of a plant is included between the the limits of the
sap's impulse, and that which has been called its fall or descent.
1490. The actual fall of the sap is the death of the plant.
1491. If with the cessation of the influence of light, the polarity
ceases entirely in the plant; it is then one year old or an _annual_.
Every part of it dies off.
1492. In biennial plants the aerial polarity indeed disappears, but the
polarity of the root remains. Flower, leaf, and stalk die.
1493. Perennial plants, also, do not entirely lose the stem-polarity,
but only while they develop a new plant about the old. Flower and leaf
only perish, while the water-and earth-organs remain alive.
1494. The old liber dies with every maturation of the fruit, because
there the difference attains solution. But a new life develops itself
in the parenchyma of the plant, and forms new liber or, properly
speaking, a new plant about the old.
1495. Persistent plants consist of numerous plants, which gradually
grow round about each other.
1496. In accordance with the idea of the plant, each one perishes with
the maturation of the fruit.
1497. On account of the addition of the new plant about the old,
the plant has also been confined to no definite magnitude and to no
definite number in its mode of ramification.
1498. Indefiniteness in form, size and number, is the character of the
plant, although a law lies at the basis of all this. The animal has a
definite size, because several animals do not grow around each other.
III.--_PHYTOLOGY_.
1499. Hitherto the organs of the plant have been considered in a
general point of view or as to their idea in time; to this now follows
the development of the plant in a special sense, or its representation
in space.
1500. The vegetable tissues, systems, and organs have only by degrees
been disengaged from each other and independently perfected. The
independent or self-substantial development of the organs constitutes
definite or _individual_ plants.
1501. A plant, in which all the organs are present, separately or
self-substantially developed and yet combined, is without doubt the
highest in point of rank.
1502. Before it attains to this separation, nature can only produce
lower forms, in which fewer organs have attained to independence. These
forms constitute the diversity of plants and their plurality, for
nature establishes every principal form as a finished organization.
1503. There are as many plants different from each other as there are
organs, namely, tissues, anatomical systems and members.
1504. The sum of all plants is called the vegetable kingdom; _this is
the self-substantial representation of all vegetable organs_. (Ed. 1st,
1810, p. 123.)
1505. The vegetable kingdom is consequently the expression of
the vegetable idea, or of the perfect plant represented _in the
multiplicity of individuals_; it is the plant disintegrated, or
anatomised, by nature herself.
1506. Were we therefore acquainted with all vegetable organs, we should
know their rank and developmental series; and thus also recognize the
character, rank, and developmental series of the plants themselves,
or their divisions. There can be no doubt that the lowest organs, e.
g. the tissues, have been first developed and independently perfected
as plants; later on they separate into anatomical systems and finally
into members, whereby perfect plants must originate. _The division or
classification of the vegetable kingdom is consequently that of the
vegetable organs._ The Systematic of plants is a copy of that of their
organs, or a plastic representation of the philosophical vegetable
anatomy. With this every thing has been granted, which is requisite
for the building or erection of the vegetable system. All principles,
together with the methods, rest in the proposition that has been
expressed.
1507. The artificial systems of plants are related to the vegetable
kingdom, as the lexicon or dictionary is to language. Those systems
which have hitherto been termed natural, but which should properly
be called _methodical_, are related to the vegetable kingdom, as
the ordinary grammar is to a language. The vegetable system must,
however, be related to the vegetable kingdom, as the philosophical or
genetic grammar is to language. This only agrees with the essence of
the language, or is _natural_. The vegetable system is necessarily a
philosophical or genetic one, that alone being truly or legitimately
natural. (This system was first propounded by Oken, in the Ed. 1st
of the Naturphilosophie, 1810; further developed in _Dietrich's_
Garten Journal, 1813; carried out in his Naturgeschichte fur Schülen,
1821, and in his Lehrbuch der Nat. Gesch. _Botanik_. Weimar, 1825.)
The _artificial_ system collects the materials for the edifice, but
leaves them to lie without order and in confusion; the _methodical_ or
what has been called the natural system separates these materials and
arranges them in homogeneous groups; the _genetic_, philosophical or
truly natural, system, again mixes them amongst each other, but thereby
actually erects the edifice. All three systems are therefore necessary
and good, and no one of them merits being despised by the other; it
is only when one of them imagines that it is the other, or can render
the others unnecessary, that it trespasses from out its circle, and
deserves reproach. Thus for _Floras_, whose ultimate object is to find
out rapidly the names of plants upon botanical excursions, as also
for the labelling of specimens in botanic gardens, the artificial
system is the best; for the description, however, of foreign plants
the methodical; but for insight into the whole vegetable world the
philosophical or natural system. Would we compare Floras with each
other, the latter system must certainly come into play; but then the
matter to be dealt with is not about an excursion-book.
_VEGETABLE SYSTEM._
1508. Taken in a strict sense all the diversity of vegetable structure
of vegetables has reference first of all to the difference in the
tissues; these being either unseparated, or separated, into special
systems and members. At first the tissues lie confusedly, or without
order, amongst themselves. They then _separate_ in a concentric and
tubular form into systems, that are encased _within_ each other, like
the bark, liber, and wood, which form the _shaft_. Furthermore they
separate into members, and appear one _above_ the other, as root,
stalk, and foliage, which collectively may be called the _stem_; these
are repeated as seed, pistil, and corolla, which together are called
_flower_, and combined, _fruit_, namely, nut, plum, berry and apple.
I designate by the term _stock_ or trunk all the parts as far as the
blossom; and this together with the fruit I name thyrsus. The vegetable
stock, whose tissues have not yet separated into members, I style, from
want of a better word, _thallus_. As we divide political kingdoms into
_provinces_ and _circles_, so also may these titles be suitably applied
here. It is evident, that the plants which simply consist of tissues
and have as yet no sheaths and members, are the _Acotyledones_; those,
however, provided with sheaths, but devoid of true roots, stalk, and
foliage, _Monocotyledones_; those with true foliage or reticular-veined
leaves are, on the contrary, _Dicotyledones_. The natural system of
vegetables stands accordingly in the following manner.
A.--STOCK-PLANTS.
Province I. HISTOPHYTA, OR TISSUE-PLANTS--Acotyledones.
Class 1. Cell-plants.
2. Duct-
3. Trachea-
II. THECOPHYTA, OR SHEATH-PLANTS--Monocotyledones.
4. Bark-plants.
5. Liber-
6. Wood-
III. ARTHROPHYTA, OR MEMBER-PLANTS--Dicotyledones.
Circle 1. _Axis-plants_--Tubulifloræ.
7. Root-plants.
8. Stalk-
9. Leaf-
B.--BLOSSOM-PLANTS.
Circle 2. _Flower-plants_--Thalamopetalæ.
10. Seed-plants.
11. Ovarium-
12. Corolla-
Circle 3. _Fruit-plants_--Calycopetalæ.
13. Nut-plants.
14. Plum-
15. Berry-
16. Apple-
1509. A slight glance at the above table shows us the procedure of
Nature. The higher she ascends, the more and more she separates, and
thereby increases, the organs. There may therefore be plants which have
only a single organ or tissue, as well as others, which possess all.
1510. There cannot, however, be any plant which could simply possess
the higher without the lower organs. Higher organized plants are not
such therefore, by virtue of their having some one organ more perfectly
developed, or separated into several parts; but through this, that
they actually possess several different organs. The higher grade
of organization depends accordingly not upon the perfection of the
_Singular_, but the _number_ of the _Different_. The Perfected consists
in the _multiplicity_ combined to constitute _unity_, but by no means
in the simply homogeneous multitude of the _parts_. Numerous stamina
may render a _corolla_ higher, but not on that account the whole plant;
many digits may make a hand nobler, but not on that account, the
animal. But with many digits also that hand is nobler, in which the
digits are dissimilar.
_First Province._
HISTOPHYTA--ACOTYLEDONES.
_Devoid of, or without true spiral-vessels, leaves, corollæ, and
pistil._
The vegetable kingdom ascends, in accordance with the five main
positions of the organs, by five stages; these are again separable into
larger groups, which may be called _asexual_ and _sexual_ plants.
1511. The tissues are a something internal, being, as it were, the
viscera of plants or their parenchyma, which does not meet the light,
and can therefore have no light-organs, which are developed only out of
the foliage or leaves. The anatomical systems and organs are tissues
that have become external, have attained to air and light, and are
hence developed into air-and light-organs. Now, the light-organs are
sexual organs. The Tissue-plants can therefore have no sexual organs;
and plants divide accordingly into asexual and sexual plants. The
asexual are female plants, and are consequently the first or lowest.
Thus there can be thus no sexual or male plants, without the female
being found that belong to them.
1512. Male or androgynous plants are only possible, if spiral vessels
or tracheæ be present. They first, however, originate when the tracheæ
become external, or form a circle in the stalk, i. e. are accessible by
light; as in the Mono-and Dicotyledones.
1513. The asexual plants are not cryptogamic, but agamic. They do not
perform self-impregnation clandestinely, but not at all; for they
do not attain light-difference, and consequently not male organs.
Analogues of stamina may make their appearance in the mosses, but they
invariably fail to attain the development of pollen. What have been
called male parts in other cryptogamia, do not merit consideration.
Such projections or prefigurations are besides to be found everywhere.
1514. The asexual plants are simply formations of the tissues, of the
galvanic vesicle, and are thus of a female nature. They are nothing
more than a great utricle full of small vesicles, which by desiccation
subdivide into _germinal dust_ or sporules, each granule whereof
attracts other mucous vesicles out of the moisture, in order to form
again a large utricle.
1515. The asexuals cease in the process of vegetation, where the other
plants begin. With the rupture of the gemmal-or bud-vesicle in the
higher plants a new world for the first time emerges into view, such as
stem, leaves, blossom, and then the ultimate bud ruptures for the first
time as the pericarp, and scatters its higher organized germinal powder
as true seeds.
1516. An asexual plant is one, which, without all the intermediate
organs of the stem, at once represents the capsule or ovary. It
consists only of the beginning and end of the plant.
1517. The higher plants differ from the lower by the interposition of
new organs between the two terminal organs, namely, the primary vesicle
and the true seed. It may be said, that the asexual plant is naught but
seed, and that the seed of the higher plants is a fungus upon a leafy
peduncle, a fungus more highly organized by light.
1518. The asexual plants have no true root, stalk, and leaf; they have
not even a true bark, liber, and wood, in so far as these first make
their appearance through separation. Tracheæ are first exhibited in
the higher ferns, and then only as constituting a single string, which
occupies the middle of the plant, and consequently forms no circle or
zone.
1519. As again the true seed is a leaf-formation, and possesses
therefore cotyledons or seed-lobes, such seeds must be wanting in the
asexual plants; they are therefore Acotyledones. From the same cause,
however, the germinal leaves or plumula must be also wanting; they are
therefore germless, or anembryonic.
1520. The farinaceous or granular matter, lying next to the germ
when within the shell of the true seeds, is called the _albumen_ or
perisperm; the seeds of the asexual plants are therefore nothing else
but albumen. They are therefore devoid of the funiculus or, what has
been called, umbilical cord.
1521. The involucre, wherein, in true seeds, the germ and albumen are
found, is the seed-coat or testa; consequently what has been called
the capsule of the asexual plants (of mosses and ferns) corresponds
simply to this spermoderm or seed-covering, and is no true ovarium. The
capsules of mosses and ferns are therefore seeds full of albuminous
dust.
1522. If any of these be regarded as a capsule, it can be the
_calyptra_ of the mosses. This, too, is probably nothing else than the
external testa; the proper capsule being its internal coat.
1523. The _indusium_ of ferns incloses several capsules as they have
been called, or properly seeds, and might therefore, if considered
alone, be compared with an ovarium, but it is probably none other than
the covering corresponding to the perichoetium that surrounds the
base of the setæ in mosses. The sorus is an accumulation of seeds with
pulverulent albumen contained in a membranaceous covering, the indusium.
1524. The life of the asexual plants consists simply in the galvanic
process. They are the primary organisms, planted in air.
1525. As being simply galvanic process, they would require but little
light and air; they therefore seek the darkness, like the roots, and
thrive also in a corrupt atmosphere, in caves, mines, cellars, and such
like situations. They can from the same cause thrive only in moisture,
in water, upon marshy meadow lands, after rain, copious dew, and so on.
1526. They are devoid the process of fermentation, as being that which
is imparted by the oxydation of air, and they therefore yield neither
sugar nor acids. They are simply the organized process of putrefaction;
their ultimate product is therefore germinal powder, infusorial matter.
Their remaining secretions are alkaline bodies; to which belong the
pungent, fetid, and nauseous excretions, as the hydrogen gas and
ammonia of the fungi, the mucus of the fuci, the carbonate of lime in
the lichens, the cell-threads of the mosses, the fetid principle of
ferns.
1527. Very few of these plants require the course of a summer in order
to perfect or complete the vital course; a single ray of light of one
day's, aye, of one hour's duration, is sufficient with most of them
to evoke the feeble difference, to rouse the swell of the sap, and
precipitate the infusorial powder.
1528. Automatic movements, as in the leaves and stamina of the higher
plants, scarcely occur in them, or at most in the ferns, from their
possessing spiral vessels. They divide, according to the tissues, into
three classes, into Cell-, Vessel-, and Trachea-plants.
_CLASS I._
_Cell-plants--Fungi._
Here belong those plants which consist simply of cellular tissue,
having no sap-tubes and tracheæ. Such plants, too, possess no regular
or hexagonal cellular tissue.
1529. The cellular tissue, in which there is only a single active
process, cannot essentially alter its primary form. It is therefore an
accumulation of round or cylindrical mucus-vesicles.
1530. Mucus-vesicles, in which the air-process is not as yet active,
cannot be coloured green; but must have the colour of the earth.
1531. Plants, composed of amorphous and earth-coloured cellular tissue,
are _Fungi_. The fungi are simply clusters of mucus-vesicles joined
together in a more or less regular manner, their union being effected
in dark, hollow and wet situations.
1532. They may therefore originate wherever mucous juices are evolved
by the potential agency of a higher organization, and thus by
putrefaction. The fungi originate by _æquivocal generation_. They are
the anal-organizations of the higher plants and animals; the corrupted
and luxuriating juices.
1533. Nevertheless the fungus is propagated by division of its
vesicles, which again, in accordance with their peculiar laws of
polarity, attract mucus-vesicles, and thus obtain the form of the
earlier or parent fungus. This is only a more regulated kind of
_æquivocal generation_.
1534. The origin of the fungi may therefore happen in a twofold manner,
namely, by formation from other juices, and by that of their own, which
is called propagation. Still at bottom both are one in kind.
1535. Their granules or vesicles are seeds, properly sporules, which
are self-developed without male polarization.
DIVISION.
1536. The fungi pass moreover through stages of development, which
range parallel to the vegetable classes; since it is impossible for any
other organs to originate in them but such as belong to the idea of the
plant. The lowest fungus can therefore change only, by endeavouring to
develop in itself ducts, tracheæ, roots, and such like parts.
1537. There are accordingly as many developmental stages of the fungi
as there are vegetable classes. These divisions are called _families_.
1538. The vegetable families range parallel to the classes. This law
must hold good of all the classes. There are therefore in each class 16
families. An association of families upon each stage may be called an
order.
1539. At first the fungus is none other than a mucus-vesicle or a small
cluster of vesicles, e. g. an _uredo_ or _mildew_. Such a vesicle next
becomes longitudinally extended, and includes within itself other
vesicles or granules, e. g. _mould_. These mould-filaments or threads
unite again so as to form a common mass, which is surrounded by an
external membrane, and is then called _puff-ball_. The pulverulent
granules, which were irregularly accumulated in the puff-balls, unite
at length in a regular manner to constitute a trunk of varied form, as
in the _ascomycetes_, e. g. _sphæriæ_. Finally, the mould-filaments
with their sporules are regularly collected together in an investing
membrane, which, like a puff-ball, is supported upon a stipes or
stem, e. g. the sarcomycetes or _agarics_. There are therefore 5
developmental stages of the fungi, which correspond to those of the
classes; viz. the parenchyma, shaft, stem, flower, and fruit; and
constitute orders.
1540. Each order is resolvable again into three divisions or families,
which correspond to the organs. Thus there are in each class 16 tribes
or families, which obviously range parallel to the vegetable organs or
classes. (Vid. Tab. B.)
1541. A tribe or family is consequently the representation of a
vegetable organ within a class.
1542. The genera obey the same law; for essential differences are only
conceivable through the presence of different organs.
1543. Species is in the animal kingdom that which copulates without
necessity and compulsion. The same definition is applicable to plants.
The species range, without doubt, according to the diversities in the
individual organs themselves, which admit of a great multitude of
combinations, the number of which is not as yet to be determined.
1544. The component parts of the fungi are either perfectly
indifferent, mucous or gelatinoid matter; or they are of an alcaline
nature, being acrid, poisonous, and such like. Their odour is usually
dead, disagreeable, and loathsome, or analogous to their essential
process of decomposition.
_CLASS II._
_Vessel-or Duct-plants--Mosses._
1545. The intercellular passages or succigerent vessels of plants make
their first appearance in a state of perfection, when, the cells being
extended lengthways, have become hexagonal and are placed in regular
juxtaposition. In these plants therefore we meet with regular cellular
tissue, but still without spiral vessels or tracheæ.
1546. As the vessels or ducts constitute the fundamental tissue of the
liber, while this is the principal system of the stalk; so now does the
stem begin to be manifested and separated from the fruit. The seeds
are no longer therefore distributed in the present class throughout
the whole trunk, but developed in a special involucrum or theca, which
corresponds to the puff-ball, or to the pileus of the higher organized
fungi.
1547. Plants with vessels, and consequently a cauliform formation, have
at once also the commencement of a bark, and next the green colour. The
vascular are the first green plants, and differ chiefly through that
character from the fungi. They are the _Fucacæ_ or _Sea-wracks_.
1548. They have the colour of the water, because the course of the
sap corresponds to the aqueous process; they are aquatic, just as the
brown fungi are terrestrial, plants. Their component parts are aqueous,
indifferent, mucous, and filose. Their habitation is the water itself
or bogs. If they occupy dry situations, they live only when it rains.
1549. They likewise pass through the five stages of vegetation, and
form therefore five orders.
1550. Order 1. The lowest or _Tissue-mosses_, corresponding to the
Uredines; are again naught but cells or mucous pellicles, but, from
growing in water, and being consequently exposed to light and a
stronger oxydation, they are green--_Tremellini_.
1551. They multiply by subdivision, since new vesicles or granules
are developed in their interior, which become separated, and subsist
or continue to grow for themselves. They therefore originate also by
æquivocal generation, but by such an one as constantly occurs in water
and light.
1552. The second order, or the _Vascular mosses_ corresponds to the
sheaths, or to the Hyphomycetes. They are long filaments replete
with granules, growing in water, and therefore green--_Confervaceæ_.
These plants begin to ramify, and either increase by this means or by
effusion of granular matter.
1553. The third order, that of the _Tracheal mosses_, corresponds to
the stem, or to the Gasteromycetes. A membranous trunk originates in
water, which in certain places secretes the seeds in special vesicles
or cysts--_Fucales_ or connate Confervæ. The fuci have at once the form
of a stalk with root and leaves, because they correspond to these three
organs of the axis.
1554. The fourth order, the _Floral mosses_, endeavours to obtain the
_blossom_, and therefore elevates itself out of the water, but loses
on that account the trunk-like character, and exhibits for the most
part only membranous expansions, upon which seeds are secreted, which
being usually of a beautiful colour, thus assume the appearance of
corollæ--_Lichenales_. The lichens are fuci in dry situations. They
correspond to the Pyrenomycetes or Sphæriaceæ.
1555. As the variegated colours appear in the blossom, so do they
also in the lichens; but here they are for the first time chemically
developed, distributed throughout the whole substance, and concealed.
Most lichens yield colouring matters.
1556. As the stem is, in accordance with their signification, wanting
to the lichens, they thus require a foreign trunk for their nutrition.
They are therefore developed for the most part upon other plants, and
principally upon the bark.
1557. Lastly, the fifth order, _Fruit-mosses_, originates through the
development of a self-substantial _fruit_ upon a cauliform stem--the
_Mosses_ proper.
1558. As these are the highest plants of this class, and those that
directly precede the tracheal formation, so the bark already resolves
itself into individual leaves, which are, however, still destitute of
spiral vessels.
1559. What have been called the seeds or sporules are accumulated in a
capsule-like fruit upon the summit of the stalk. This fruit corresponds
to the pileated fungus, and therefore springs up in an opercular manner
like the latter.
1560. But this capsule is only a spermoderm, which incloses albuminous
granules that have no proper germ or seed-lobes; they are plants with
seed-vessels or pyxidia, upon an open-leaved stalk.
1561. They divide likewise into sixteen families. (Vid. Tab. B.)
_CLASS III._
_Trachea-plants--Ferns._
1562. At first a fascicle only of spiral vessels can originate, which
is necessarily surrounded by cellular tissue, and therefore lies in the
middle of the plant. Such plants are the _Filices_ or ferns.
1563. As the spiral vessels are the antetype of the leaves, so does
the trunk here obtain the form of the leaf, without itself producing
true leaves. For, in the ferns, the fruits lie upon the back of the
apparent leaf, which can only be the trunk.
1564. The fruits, being further removed from the fungi, no longer
spring up in an opercular, but in a valvular, manner like the higher
capsules.
1565. Green plants with imperfect spiral vessels and blossoms, and also
with naked seeds devoid of true capsules, belong to the class of Ferns.
1566. I therefore place in this class the _Coniferæ_ or trees with
acicular foliage, because they have no ovarium, but naked seeds; and
besides these, some other plants, though doubtfully, on account of
their very abortive blossoms, as the Naiadaceæ. There are therefore
Tracheal plants without and with stamina. The first portray the stock
or trunk, the second, the thyrsus or blossom; they live mostly in dry
situations, and produce resins or fetid matters.
1567. First order. _Parenchymatous ferns--Aquatic ferns._ I here place
the aquatic ferns, because, as water-plants, they occupy a lower
situation, because they support the fruits upon a radical trunk, and
finally, because these fruit-vesicles have two kinds of contents, all
of which seems to remind us of the fuci and lichens; they correspond to
the Tremellini.
1568. Second order. _Sheath-ferns--Club-ferns._ Here commence the
land ferns, and those kinds indeed whose so-called capsules open in
a valvular manner, just as in the liverworts; or almost after the
fashion of a pyxidium by an orifice, somewhat as in the mosses; the
trunk is provided with squamose leaves or lobes, e. g. Lycopodiaceæ and
Osmundaceæ; they correspond to the Confervaceæ.
1569. Third order. _Stem-ferns--Annular or Ring-ferns._ Here we meet
with phylloidal involuted capsules or seeds upon the back of a stem
that is likewise leaf-like; e. g. the typical or true ferns.
1570. They have rudiments of roots and a stem, together with foliage,
because they are the prototypes of these three organs.
1571. The ring of their capsules corresponds to the midrib of the
leaf. In the preceding order the capsule was only an upsprung stalk;
but it is here an upsprung and unfolded leaf, the prototype of the
bud-development.
1572. The fern-capsules, namely, the true seeds, are an accumulation
of leaf-buds at the extremity of the fascicle of spiral vessels. The
indusium is the upraised epidermis, which opens in a spathose manner;
it consequently stands in the signification perhaps of the floral
spathe or involucrum. They correspond to the Fuci.
1573. Fourth order. _Floral ferns--Fluviales._ If the tracheal plants
be exalted unto the flower, male organs cannot fail in at once
beginning to develop. I place therefore in this order the Naiadaceæ
with very arrested blossoms, and simply stamina without calyx and
corolla. The spiral vessels are rather doubtful.
1574. Fifth order. _Fruit ferns--Coniferæ._ Tree with
imperfectly-formed spiral vessels, stamina without corollæ, seeds
without ovarium; thus agreeing with the Cryptogamia even to the
stamina; they form likewise sixteen families. (Vid. Tab. B.)
SEXUAL PLANTS.
1575. So soon as the three tissues separate completely from each other
into bark, liber, and wood, while the tracheæ are arranged circularly
into several clusters or groups, does the antagonism of these organs
also make its appearance, and exhibit itself as sex in the floral
organs.
1576. This separation can only be attained through the influence of
the air and light, whereby the sexual organs are conditionated. These
plants have therefore the several organs of the trunk and blossom.
1577. Anthers can be wanting to none of the following plants. Now, the
anthers are leaf-buds; the leaf-formation must be therefore developed
also in their antagonism, or in the seed. The leaves of the seed,
however, are called seed-lobes; consequently all seeds of sexual
plants have seed-lobes or cotyledons.
1578. Now the perfect seed is the whole plant in miniature with
root, stalk, and leaf. This formation is, however, only possible
where there is a sex, or where the vegetable tissues have emerged
self-substantially from each other.
1579. But the anthers are buds upon a floral rib; consequently all
sexual plants must have a part of the blossom, which ranks in the
signification of leaf, and thus either the calyx or, with this also,
the corolla.
1580. All sexual plants must have a shaft or scape, in which its three
parts, bark, liber, and wood, are to be distinguished; even so must the
three parts of the stem, the root, stalk, and leaf, have the parts of
the blossom which correspond to them, viz. seed, ovarium, and calyx or
corolla.
1581. The sexual plants next divide into Stock-and Blossom-plants, the
former of these parting into Shaft-and Stem-plants.
_Second Province._
SHAFT-PLANTS--MONOCOTYLEDONES.
1582. In the Shaft-plants the invaginate character is predominant, the
wood being surrounded by liber, and this by bark; they are therefore
tubular in form--_tubular plants_.
1583. The cellular tissue preponderates in them, and the tracheal
fascicles form therefore no closed circle, but are dispersed; scattered
fasciculi cannot, however, ramify but only pursue a straight course and
form streaks--_striated plants_.
1584. Ramification is wanting unto these plants, partly on account
of their tubular form, partly on account of the smaller quantity of
tracheal fascicles--_aramose plants_. A vegetable stem without branches
is called shaft or scape; thus they are _shaft-plants_.
1585. The blossoms do not stand upon ramules, but upon the stem
itself; thus, if ever ramification originates, it can first occur in
the floral peduncles.
1586. As they are deficient in branches, so also are they in
buds--_agemmal_ or _budless plants_.
1587. The tendency to produce branches forms nodes, which are only
imperfect ramal zones--_nodose plants_.
1588. Where the formation of branches is wanting, the minor
ramification of ribs must be also wanting in the leaves; they are
parallel-ribbed.
1589. The leaf is only a ruptured and expanded tube or spathe, which
surrounds the shaft--_spathose plants_.
1590. Where branches are wanting, there can be also no petiolated
leaves; they have therefore only radical leaves, from the
midst of which the shaft or scape sprouts forth, only as a
floral-peduncle--_radical-leaved plants_.
1591. If all these leaves be still sheathed or encased within each
other, they are called bulbs--_bulbose plants_.
1592. Since the corolla is the repetition of the leaves, so also must
its structure resemble theirs--_spathose corollæ_.
1593. But as there are here only radical leaves, so also is the corolla
only a radical leaf-corolla. In the blossom, however, the radical
leaf has become spathe, the cauline leaf, calyx, the ramuscular leaf,
corolla. Such blossoms consist therefore either of a spathe only, as in
the Aroideæ, or of a calyx--_calycine plants_.
1594. The stamina originate from the calyx. In calycine flowers
therefore all the stamina must range opposite to the corolla-petals.
These plants have only _opposite_, no _alternate stamina_. It has been
generally assumed that the Monocotyledones have no true corollæ, but
only coloured calyces. Philosophy agrees with this opinion; but adds
thereunto that the corollæ of the Monocotyledones may be also merely
spathes or involucra.
1595. The separation of the bud-formation here takes place for the
first time in the blossom, namely, in the stamina. The number of the
floral parts must be limited to three; for this is the first number,
in which the leaf-ribs may divide. Corollæ, stamina, and capsules are
ternary--_trinity-plants_.
1596. As the seed is only an undeveloped leaf-bud, so in it only can
the number of the leaf be found. Since, however, the leaf does not
ramify in the present group of plants, but is only a single spathose
leaf; so also does the seed consist only of one such leaf or of
one seed-lobe--_Monocotyledones_. The wheat-seed or grain is none
other than a grass-leaf with a short spathe and very dense, highly
farinaceous, lamellæ. In germinating a new leaf emerges from the short
spathe; it is the germinal leaf.
1597. Thus plants having a tubular stem, and such kind of foliage,
corollæ and seeds, are Monocotyledones.
1598. The chemical bodies are more diversified in these than in the
remaining members of the vegetable kingdom. In the roots, as in the
tubers of the Orchideæ we meet with distinct mucilage; in the bulbs
with alkalies or acrid matter; and with sugar, as being a feeble
conversion of the starch in the stalk. The mucilage of the root
becomes, when repeated in the seed, flour. Oily matters or acids seldom
occur, and fleshy fruits scarcely ever.
1599. The ovary is almost throughout this region of plants either a
single spathose leaf or caryopsis; or three spathe-leaves are united
together, which thus, as follicles or carpels, usually burst open upon
the internal edge.
DIVISION.
1600. If we now proceed to survey the Monocotyledons, in the order just
set before us, we shall recognize among them three typical groups,
to which the others are allied; they are the Gramineæ, Liliaceæ, and
Palmaceæ.
1601. The Grasses obviously rank the lowest as well in respect of their
root, stalk, and foliage, as also of their stunted blossoms, ovarium,
and seeds.
1602. To them succeed the Lilies, which have a well-marked root, a more
perfect, though still always herbaceous, stalk, and a few spathoid,
more numerously ribbed leaves; lastly, their corollæ, ovaria, and
seeds are perfect; but still they invariably have no genuine fruits.
1603. Finally, the Palms are elevated above all by their stem being
rich in tracheæ and wooded, as also by the perfection of their
fruit. Scientifically, the scapose or shaft-plants must also resolve
themselves into three classes; into Bark-, Liber-, and Wood-plants.
_CLASS IV._
_Bark-plants--Gramineæ._
1604. In these plants the whole stalk must have assumed the form of the
cortex or bark, and consequently be hollow--_tubular_, or _culmaceous
plants_.
1605. A mere bark cannot ramify. But the tendency unto ramification is
manifested as nodes--_nodose plants_.
1606. The leaf which still represents the bark, is only imperfectly
slit up, and therefore still forms a tube. Such leaves are called
tubular or spathe-leaves proper.
1607. Such tubular leaves being only half slit up can only shoot forth
gradually from each other, and that indeed in such a manner that they
stand actually by twos, encased in, or opposite to, each other.
1608. Since the blossom is, as it were, an impression, or copy
of the leaves, so will it here also consist only of spathiform,
involucral, or calycine leaves, and only of two, one of which, though
opposite to, is surrounded by the other. Such floral parts are called
glumes--_glumaceous plants_. If four glumes are present, then the
external pair of them corresponds to the involucrum or spatha, the
internal to the calyx.
1609. The corolla-petals are of necessity arrested in plants such as
these, where no true leaf is as yet developed; frequently two only are
left persistent as pellicles or _lodiculæ_.
1610. This is still more the case with the ovary and seed; in each only
one leaf attains development, and the seed has entirely coalesced with
the ovarium. This kind of fruit is called _caryopsis_.
1611. Nodose plants with hollow scape or shaft, tubular leaves, glumose
blossoms, and cariopsidal fruits are _Grasses_.
DIVISION.
1612. The Bark-plants pass moreover, together with their subdivisions,
through the five stages of vegetable organs, and they will therefore
produce also a more perfect stalk, leaves, and flowers. The whole calyx
will, however, never be coloured or corolla-like in its character.
Cortical plants are thus herbaceous plants with hollow stalk, and with
an arrested or green calyx, without sarcose or fleshy fruit.
1613. Those, which have simply glumose flowers, are without doubt the
lowest in rank, as corresponding to the tissues and stock, but not yet
to the flower.
1614. These again divide into two great groups, whereof the one
includes plants with simply uni-seminal cariopsides, the other,
on the contrary, capsules containing a free seed--_Grasses_ and
_Reed-grasses_. The grasses which have a cariopsis or grain-fruit
reascend by two stages; the most inferior in rank do not attain to a
ramification, but the flowers stand crowded together in spikes; the
others, on the contrary, are pedunculated and ramify in panicles.
1615. Among the higher kinds instead of glumes there are regular
flowers, of which, however, the calyx is still glumose or at least
green. The cariopsis is converted into a multilocular capsule, as in
the Restiaceæ, Commelineæ, &c.
1616. The first order, or the _Parenchymatous grasses_, have glumose
flowers with a cariopsis for fruit, borne upon culms or nodose straws,
and do not attain to any ramification--_spicate grasses_. In their
seeds we meet with the greatest amount of starch developed, though
doubtless at the cost of the trunk.
1617. The second order of _Spathose grasses_ are similar, and support
ramified flowers--_paniculate grasses_. In this division occur grasses
of a dendroidal character, and having occasionally fruit-like ovaria,
as in the bamboos.
1618. The third order consists of the _Cauline grasses_. Here the
leaves at once separate completely from the shaft, which is therefore
free from nodes. Nut-like capsules, though still inclosed in glumes,
also make their appearance--_reed-grasses_.
1619. The fourth order, _Floral grasses_. The leaves are still only
radical; the shaft is anodal; the flowers are separated into green
calyx and coloured corolla, with three or six stamina, and mostly with
a trilocular capsule--Junceæ, to which the Commelinaceæ are allied.
1620. The fifth order, _Carpal grasses_. Hollow anodal shafts,
with scarcely spathiform, mostly broad leaves, the ribs of which
begin to ramify; with similar calyces and corollæ, and numerous
capsules--_Seeroseæ_, to which the _Alismaceæ_ and _Hydrocharideæ_ are
related.
1621. The highest kind of fruit attained by this class is nut-like,
never fleshy in character. The stalk is nowhere woody as in some
grasses. The grasses divide, as do all other orders of plants, into
sixteen families. (Vid. Tab. B.)
_CLASS V._
_Liber-plants_--_Liliaceæ._
1622. The substance of the stalk is soft and succulent; its structure
devoid of nodes; the leaves are tolerably free and ribbed; calyx
and corolla coloured, both being perfectly formed and invariably
tripartite, as is likewise the capsule, which has many seeds upon its
inner angle. These plants are the _Lilies_. In the present class all
parts have been developed in conformity to the liber, are rich in sap,
and have become dense and fleshy.
1623. The roots are mostly tubers or bulbs, containing a superior kind
of mucilage, or aromatic principles. The shaft is not hollow but,
though herbaceous, filled up; the leaves are elevated upon the stalk.
One division of these plants has irregular corollæ with stunted stamina
and capsules, the latter containing mostly dust-like seeds, as in the
Orchideæ and aromatic plants.
1624. The other division has regular 2 × 3ary corollæ, with, perfect
glume-capsules and middling-sized seeds, as the Irideæ and Liliaceæ
proper.
1625. The first order, _Parenchymatose lilies_. The corollæ are
irregular, bilabiate, and stand upon the calyx and a membranous
sexlocular capsule with very small seeds; are divided according to the
pollen--e. g. _pulverulent Orchideæ_.
1626. The second order, _Sheath-lilies_. Characters similar to those
of the preceding order, but the pollen is agglomerated into waxy
granules--_granular orchideæ_.
1627. The third order, _Stem-lilies_. The corollæ are likewise
bilabiate and situated above the calyx, but the ovarium contains few
seeds, and the capsule is mostly nut-like--_aromatic plants_, such as
the _Scitamineæ_ and _Musaceæ_.
1628. The fourth order _Floral-lilies_, have regular blossoms,
separated into calyx and corolla, placed _above_ the capsule, and
mostly furnished with three stamina. Here belong the _Hypoxideæ_,
_Hæmodoraceæ_ and _Irideæ_.
1629. The fifth order, _Fruit-lilies_. The leaves have not yet
completely separated from each other, but still form bulbs; the corollæ
are regular, have six stamina, and are placed _beneath_ the capsule, as
in the _true lilies_. To this order belong the _Colchicaceæ_, _Aloinæ_
and _Liliaceæ_. Their bulbs contain mostly acrid matters. They divide
into sixteen families. (Vid. Tab. B.)
_CLASS VI._
_Wood-plants--Palmaceæ._
_Plants with woody shaft and with fruits, mostly enclosed in spadices._
1630. The desiccation of the cells and fibres is promoted by the
increased process of oxydation. Where therefore the tracheæ attain the
preponderance, there the conversion into wood originates.
1631. The stalks of these plants are not hollow, but have a dense
interior, because the fasciculi of tracheæ lie within the liber, and
there increase.
1632. The main bulk of the stalk will consist of tracheæ.
1633. As the tracheæ are longitudinal organs, and the other tissues
also extend lengthways, so does the stalk or stem in these plants
predominate over the other parts.
1634. In this class the most perfect leaves as regards their present
stage are developed; for they are only expansions of the tracheæ, which
are here present in superabundance. As regards the form also, these
leaves must rank higher than those of the preceding class; the spathe
is shorter, the leaf itself usually broad, many-ribbed, and frequently
pinnate. The leaves are also perfect as to position, being no longer
mere radical leaves, but situated upon the stalk, even on its apical
extremity.
1635. The ramification gradually emerges into view, where forsooth its
occurrence is possible in the shaft-plants, or in the inflorescence.
It is always multiple in character, mostly spadici-, muscari-, and
paniculiform.
1636. As regards the blossom the ovarium is most perfectly evolved,
because it is developed out of the stalk; it is ternary and becomes
elevated into a fruit with few seeds.
1637. The corollæ are frequently stunted, yet regular and 2 × 3ary,
though insignificant on account of the preponderance in size of the
fruit.
1638. In this class we meet with the first true or genuine fruits;
because in it for the first time the three anatomical systems are
completely separated.
1639. Plants having a ligneous stalk, free and many-ribbed leaves,
ramified inflorescence and ternary fleshy fruits, are the _Palmaceæ_.
The Palmaceæ have a woody, very hollow stem, with many-ribbed,
divided, and often pinnate leaves; a muscariform inflorescence lodged
in spathes, sexanary corollæ with nuts, berries, or drupes. With the
palms are associated the Typhaceæ, Aroideæ, Piperales, Pandanales,
Dioscoreæ, Smilaceæ, Asparagi, Convallariæ, and Bromeliæ; for their
stalks are mostly woody, the leaves broad, and placed upon the stalk,
the corollæ stunted, while, on the contrary, the ovarium is carpoidal
or fruit-like. The five orders may be disposed as follows:
1640. Order I. _Palmaceæ parenchymatosæ._ _Cynomoridæ_, _Typhaceæ_,
_Aroideæ_.
1641. Order II. _P. thecales._ _Saurureæ_, _Piperaceæ_, _Pandanaceæ_.
1642. Order III. _P. axonales._ _Dioscoreæ_, _Smilaceæ_, _Parideæ_.
1643. Order IV. _P. florales._ _Asparagoideæ_, _Convallariæ_,
_Bromeliæ_.
1644. Order V. _P. carpales._ _Palms._
1645. The plants of the first order are very imperfect herbs with
spadices. Those of the second have mostly a ligneous, nodose stalk,
with one-seeded fruits in spadices, without corollæ. The third have
separated corollæ disposed in an open form of inflorescence. The fourth
have perfect sexanary corollæ, with a frequently woody stalk and
ternary, many-seeded berries. The fifth order consists of trees having
large leaves, muscariform spadices, and perfect fruits, nuts, plums,
and berries, ternary and one-seeded. They divide into sixteen families.
(Vid. Tab. B.)
_Third Province._
RETICULAR-LEAVED PLANTS--DICOTYLEDONES.
1646. With the separation of the stock or trunk into root, stalk and
leaf, the latter organ attains its perfection; it becomes a reticular
leaf--the plants possessing it being called _reticular_.
1647. The retinerved or reticular leaf is, however, only the result
of a modified organization in the stalk, and indicates a ramification
or foliiform arrangement of the tracheæ in the stem. The foliiform
arrangement of the tracheæ in the stalk is their circular disposition.
These plants have _woody zones_. Through this zone or ring of wood
first originates the perfect separation into wood, liber and bark,
whereof each formerly occupied the whole stalk or stem.
1648. The stalk is no longer a shaft or scape, but it divides into
branches and twigs--_ramular plants_.
1649. The reticular-veined are ramular leaves, and are no longer
therefore spathiform but petiolated--_petiolated leaves_. It is only at
the root that spathose leaves may occur, and this only in the plants of
the inferior classes.
1650. With the disappearance of the spathose leaves, and the appearance
of the ramules, the nodes and bulbs also disappear.
1651. The blossoms stand no longer upon a radical peduncle or stipes,
but upon ramules; in other words, upon a plant, which again stands upon
another plant, namely, the stalk.
1652. As all the higher separations of leaves here occur, so also
does the flower obtain its higher amount of separation; it becomes
quinary--_pentaschematose plants_. The ovarium passes through all
numerical conditions, being 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and polycarpellar. In like
manner all the forms of ovaria and fruits occur in the present class,
such as caryopsis, follicle, legumen, siliqua, capsule, nut, plum,
berry and apple.
1653. As the seed is a leaf-formation, so must it resemble the
reticular leaf. But reticular leaves are not spathes or simple tubes,
but ramified or separated ribs. The seed has therefore several leaves,
and two indeed for the first time, which are called seed-lobes. These
plants are therefore styled _Dicotyledones_.
DIVISION.
1654. The Dicotyledones are, in the first place, empirically divisible
into apetalous, monopetalous and polypetalous, or into plants with
calycine, tubular and petalous corollæ.
1655. It might be believed that the Apetalæ were, without further
trouble, the lowest in point of rank; but, when closely considered,
they appear as Polypetalæ with stunted corolla-petals, and are
obviously allied to the Rosaceæ. Moreover, they all bear nuts, a fact
which occurs in no other class, and they must be therefore placed
among the fruit-bearing plants. Since, however, they are epigynous
and perigynous, so must the other polypetalous Perigynæ enter into
proximity with them, and in like manner forsooth come among the
Fruit-plants.
1656. Thus the Dicotyledones separate into the Monopetalæ, hypogynous
Polypetalæ, and perigynous Polypetalæ, along with the Apetalæ. Viewed
in a scientific light, they separate according to the principal members
of the plant into three districts, Axis-, Flower-, and Fruit-plants.
FIRST CIRCLE.
_Stem-plants--Monopetalæ._
1657. The Monopetalæ or Tubulifloræ are the lowest in rank, and must
therefore take the place here assigned them. They are still spathose
corollæ. Among them are found for the most part only cariopsides and
membranous capsules, rarely fruits. They are usually, too, merely
herbs, rarely bushes, and still more rarely trees.
1658. They divide into Epigynes, Peri-and Hypogynes, of which the
former are the lowest, the latter the highest; for in that which is
left similar the coalition is an inferior sign.
1659. Their essential or typical character does not, however, reside
in the blossom, but in the trunk, and that indeed in the root, stalk,
and foliage. The question therefore may now be asked, whether in the
Epigynes the root, in the Perigynes the stalk, and in the Hypogynes the
foliage, be the principal organ.
_CLASS VII._
_Root-plants._
1660. That the Tubulifloræ with superior blossoms and fleshy root are
radical plants, admits of being easily demonstrated. The preponderance
of the root is evident from its size, its quantity of contained sap,
or special chemical ingredients. A root that is rich in sap, and much
denser than the stalk, is called a turnip. These plants are thus
_turnip-plants_.
1661. Among the Monopetalæ, however, there are napiform roots only
in the _Epigynes_, namely, the Syngenesia or salad-plants, and among
some _Perigynes_, namely, the Campanuleæ, as well as the Cucurbitaceæ.
The Syngenesia are consequently the radical plants. The roots of the
Scorzoneræ, Pastinaceæ, Cichoraceæ, and Tussilago or coltsfoot, &c.,
belong to this class.
1662. That the Scabiosæ and Valerianeæ are directly related to the
Syngenesia is likewise indicated by their roots. Unto these succeed in
point of structure the Campanulaceæ and the Cucurbitaceæ, which have
frequently, too, napiform or turnip-shaped roots.
1663. The number of the Syngenesia is so great that they fill up all
the orders of the trunk. In accordance with their whole structure they
are obviously the lowest, the stalk being for the most part herbaceous
and placed within a circle of radical leaves, but being itself provided
with few, imperfect, and scarcely ever pinnate leaves; they have
moreover numerous stunted blossoms that are connate with the single or
solitary seed, and crowded together, like spadices, grass-spikes, or
the fungal pilei, upon a carpoclinium or receptacle.
1664. They are a repetition of the fungi and grasses; of the former
in their fleshy root and inflorescence, of the latter likewise in the
inflorescence and in the spathoidal root-leaves; above all, in the
single large seed, confluent with the ovarium and calyx. The principle
of their division must, where it is possible, and for obvious reasons,
be drawn from the organs of the trunk.
1665. First order. _Radicariæ parenchymatosæ._--Syngenesia, having
radical leaves and uniform florets, tubular or wholly stunted ligular
florets--_Cichoraceæ_ and _Thistles_.
1666. Second order. _P. vaginatæ._--Syngenesia, with opposite leaves
and different kinds of florets, such as radiated, partly lingual and
partly tubular corollæ--_Sunflowers_, _Silphieæ_.
1667. Third order. _R. axonales._--Syngenesia, with alternate leaves
and diversified florets--_Anthemideæ_, _Senecionidæ_, _Astereæ_.
1668. Fourth order. _R. florales._--Here the ovarium is no longer
dense and confluent with the calyx, and it begins to become
trilocular--_Scabiosæ_, _Valerianeæ_, and _Campanulæ_.
1669. Fifth order. _R. fructuariæ._--Here a perfect fruit is developed,
which is connate with the calyx--_Asarideæ_, _Passifloreæ_, and
_Cucurbitaceæ_. They have apple-like 3-5 ry fruits, and many of them
have napiform roots, e. g. the Gichtrüben. They divide into sixteen
families. (Vid. Tab. B.)
_CLASS VIII._
_Stalk-plants._
1670. Plants with a predominating development of stalk, leaves
narrow, mostly opposite, quaternary corollæ upon the calyx, ovarium
multilocular, and containing few seeds.
1671. Here everything, both root and leaf, must be stalk-like in
character; the stalk is therefore woody, the root fibrous, the foliage
twig-like or narrow, like needles.