_PERSONALITY OF PLANTS_
[Illustration: The Fuchsia has a Distinctive and Esthetic Manner.]
PERSONALITY
OF PLANTS
_By_ ROYAL DIXON _and_
FRANKLYN E. FITCH
[Illustration]
New York
BOULLION-BIGGS
1923
Copyright, 1923, by
BOULLION-BIGGS, Inc.
_All Rights Reserved_
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION 11
ORIGIN OF PLANTS 17
LIFE OF A PLANT 27
MIGRATIONS OF PLANTS 39
COMRADES OF THE PLANT WORLD 57
ALLIES OF THE PLANT WORLD 69
MARRIAGE CUSTOMS OF PLANTS 83
ART IN THE PLANT WORLD 95
MUSIC IN THE PLANT WORLD 110
SCIENCE IN THE PLANT WORLD 122
RELIGION IN THE PLANT WORLD 141
PLANT MYTHOLOGY 154
MYSTICISM IN THE PLANT WORLD 167
PLANT INTELLIGENCE 186
THE HIGHER LIFE OF PLANTS 204
PLANTS & MEN 215
To
EDWIN MARKHAM
and
ANNA CATHERINE MARKHAM
who live their poetry.
“That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed;
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
“That not one worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivel’d in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.”
--_Tennyson._
INTRODUCTION
“The natural world, so to speak, is the raw material of the spiritual.
Therefore, ere man can understand the spiritual, he must understand the
natural,” writes Thomas Gentry.
The authors of this book would go a step further and say that the
natural world _is_ the spiritual. Soul and body, ephemeral and
material, on this plane of existence are ineffably bound together.
If you would climb to sublime heights of ghostly exaltation, study
first the grass at your feet. If you would unravel the mysteries of
the universe, desert the cloistered hearth for the wonders of woods
and meadows. Slow-thinking man will never understand the secret of his
own existence, until he thoroughly understands the plants outside his
window.
For one to examine dead, withered specimens and hope to understand
Nature is as if a person should analyze hundreds of Egyptian mummies
in order to acquaint himself with the human race. You must seek the
flowers on their native heath and treat them as friends and equals.
Too often is the human creature inclined to look upon members of the
vegetable kingdom as things apart from the world of life--insensate
beings which can be cut down and trampled without offense--mere
“growths,” more akin to earth and stone than to himself.
As a matter of fact, among the many forms of matter which exist on this
earth of ours, the only clear-cut division is between the organic and
the inorganic. The primary characteristic which distinguishes a living
creature from inanimate objects about it is, in the words of Arthur
Dendy, its power of “reacting toward its environment in such a manner
as to conduce to its own well-being; of controlling not only its own
behaviour but also the behaviour alike of its fellow creatures and of
inanimate objects, in its own interests, thereby maintaining its own
position in the universal struggle for existence.”
If this, then, is the one characteristic which distinguishes all
terrestrial life, it follows that all creatures from the unicellular
protoza to man himself are intimately related, are all part and
parcel of the same system, are recognizable by differences in degree
but not in kind, and are all interesting manifestations of that
mysterious thing we call life. No creature lives or dies to itself. The
correlation of organisms in Nature is similiar to the correlation of
organs in individual plants and animals.
If the reader will but face this fact, he will approach the study of
Nature with a new reverence. He will recognize the oneness and kinship
of all life.
It is largely the object of this book to explore the inner recesses of
breathing and thinking plantdom--to take the reader beyond the limits
of text-book botany into regions of sympathetic insight--to show how
even human arts and sciences are unchangeably bound up with the lives
and hopes of the grasses and flowers.
To do this comprehensively, it has been thought wise not only to
indicate how plants think and act but to incorporate a broad general
history of their race stretching back to their first appearance on
the planet and carried forward to the Burbank creations. With this
knowledge in hand, we are better equipped to approach that fascinating
realm which touches on the intelligence, the spirituality, the
mysticism, the psychic phenomena, the higher life of plants.
In all this, the manifest independence of plant life and purpose is
convincingly apparent. The plants have their own lives to lead and
their own evolutionary processes to carry on. They completed the
conquest of the earth long before the first human being appeared on its
surface. Out of approximately a hundred thousand species of flowering
plants, it has been estimated that only two hundred and forty-seven
render direct and important service to man, and of these, only about
fifty-four are utilized by him to any great extent.
While today it is no longer the fashion to believe that plants were
created for man’s _sole_ benefit, yet it cannot be denied that,
because of their physical limitations and inferior intelligence, the
plants frequently become very docile servants of the human race,
thereby thriving mightily and to their own great advantage. This is
as it should be. It is a law of earthly life. The danger lies in the
contempt which this servitude engenders in the consciousness of man,
the master. The plants are inferiors but very wonderful inferiors. We
should accord them the highest respect. We should accept our dominion
over them as a favour of a beneficent Providence,--a priceless gift
which it is criminal to squander or misuse.
CHAPTER I
Origin of Plants
“_’Tis a quaint thought, and yet perchance,
Sweet blossoms, ye have sprung
From flowers that over Eden once
Their pristine fragrance flung._”
“In the beginning God created the heaven and earth. And the earth was
without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And
the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let
there be light: and there was light!”
There is no greater mystery than the mystery of creation. Nowhere is
its story told more eloquently and more scientifically than in the
opening words of Genesis. All the fruitage of centuries of research but
reaffirms this ancient narrative.
In the early days of this planet, when its crust was scarcely hardened
from the molten state, there reigned what might be called the age of
water. The entire surface of the globe was covered with a sea of
restless, moving liquid, overcharged with a heavy atmosphere of vapour,
so dense that not a single ray of light could penetrate it. As the
process of cooling went on, more and more moisture condensed out of the
air, until finally the first ray of light reached the universal sea and
terrestrial day began.
Here in this dim, watery world, about the time that the first land
began to emerge from the deep, by some divine, mysterious agency, the
first life was born.
No doubt it was one-celled, free-moving, and like modern Flagellates,
partaking of the nature of both plant and animal.
Slowly, and in response to evolutionary promptings, simple aquatic
plant forms began to develop from the primary single cells. Animal
life may have begun a simultaneous development, but if it did, it did
not become strong enough to make any impress on the geologic rock from
which we draw our data.
Certainly the plants were in the ascendency. The mobile green Algae
were characteristic of the time. It is a remarkable thing that though
they are probably the progenitors of all that vast world of vegetable
life which enriches the world today, the Algae have always gone on
reproducing their own kind. Today we can watch, under a microscope, the
activities of the first form of terrestrial life, born incalculable
aeons ago.
Mayhap the earth would be peopled exclusively by Algae and similar
forms today, if it had not been for a prehistoric accident. One day,
the water suddenly receded from a bit of land and left some Algae in
the mud behind it. Now, the Algae had always been used to plenty of
water and they saw that unless they did some quick thinking, they
were in danger of drying up and blowing away. Accordingly, by common
consent, they secreted and surrounded themselves with a jelly-like mass
capable of absorbing and holding water. The amphibious Liverworts and
the _Ricciocarpus Natans_ do the same thing today.
With the Algae successfully living in the mud, surrounded by their
mucilaginous water-reservoirs, it was but a step for some enterprising
individual to extend a portion of his own tissue in search of more
water. By this simple act, the first root came into being, and lo!
there were terrestrial plants.
It is to be noted that all development in the plant world is born of
necessity. To the plants, dependence upon water, food and the impulse
to reproduction may be ascribed the start of many a new form among
them. In the more complex groups we seem to see a conscious striving
for higher and better things, but the lowlier species often need the
goad of circumstance to force them to attainment.
When the plants first emerged upon the land, a number of structural
changes became necessary. Whereas in the marine world, water is
absorbed directly by all parts of the plant, in land life special
organs of absorption and conductivity must be developed. At first, the
roots were mere rhizoids or hairs, aided by water-drinking leaves and
tubers, as in the Mosses and Liverworts today; but it was not long
before true root and vascular systems were evolved. Other changes which
came with terrestrial life were greater rigidity of tissue and devices
to guard against evaporation. Leaves were developed for the purposes of
manufacturing starch by photosynthesis, spreading out into thin layers
in order to present the greatest possible surface.
These lower land plants retained and still retain some characteristics
of their aquatic ancestry, notably swimming spore cells, as in the
Mosses. The formation of rigid cellulose about vegetable cells stops
their movement, except when cilia or projections of protoplasm extend
through openings in the cell walls. The Liverworts were probably among
the first real land plants: their spores are non-motile and they have a
massive, foot-like organ for the absorption of water.
To the liberality of Nature we must ascribe the development of the law
which ties the plants to the soil. They started out as animals, but
enjoyed such an abundance of food that it became unnecessary for them
to go in search for it. Water and carbon dioxide, which formed their
principal means of subsistence, were all about them; they settled
down to a life of quiet ease. When Corals, Sponges, Oysters and other
lower animals are similarly situated, they become as firmly rooted as
any plant. Moreover, they have free-swimming larvae analogous to the
active zoospores of certain members of the plant world.
The first land vegetation of the globe must have presented a curious
spectacle. Imagine a forest consisting of endless repetitions of
Algae, Fungi, Lichens, Liverworts and Mosses, with many forms of
gigantic sizes. The fresh-water Algae early developed a clever device
to save their race from extinction by drought. Certain cells in each
plant became hard and devoid of water, presenting that phenomenon of
suspended animation to be observed in many of the higher seeds. When
drought overtook any particular plant, it died, but these special
restive cells lived, and were carried about by the wind or other
agencies until a new abundance of moisture called them out of their
trance. As zygotes, they exist in the Nostoc today.
The first plants were non-sexual and propagated by cell division. They
were therefore capable of little advancement. With the introduction
of the sex element, infinite possibilities for racial improvement
and differentiation were opened up. The Mosses and Ferns belonging
to the family _Archegoniatae_ early established an alternation of
generation in which the spores give rise to a small plant which looks
like a Liverwort and bears the reproductive organs. The fertilized ovum
of this plant grows into a leafy, sexless individual which produces
spores non-sexually. We therefore have a generation endowed with sex
organs making for development and progress, alternating with a sexless
generation calculated to continue the tendencies of the race.
It is undoubtedly the sex element which accounts for those “sports” or
mutations in plantdom which occasionally overstep the limits of species
to form new species.
In the luxurious atmosphere of the early globe, vegetation waxed
strong and vigorous and attained remarkable proportions. The primeval
woods served to draw the superabundant carbon from the air and in
millions of decayed bodies store it up as graphite, coal, petroleum and
illuminating gas. The present day graphite beds alone represent vast
quantities of ancient vegetation. It is a unique experience to be able
to write or draw pictures of these prehistoric plants and use, in the
carbon of our pencils, portions of their very bodies.
Everything was on a grand scale in the “Old Red Sandstone” age. There
were no real trees yet, but the Asterophyllites, with their tall,
slender stems, looked much like Palms. The Eryptogams were immense
Mushrooms. Algae, Zostera and Psilophytons covered the shores with a
tangle of seaweed vegetation.
In the succeeding carboniferous period, the plant world reached the
climax of its dominion. While the variety was still very much limited,
its vigor and luxuriance were astounding. The Tree-ferns seem to have
come down to us unchanged from that time, but other plant descendants
have dwindled in size greatly. Our humble Mares’ Tails were then twenty
or thirty foot trees called Calamites. The Club-Mosses were giant
Lepidodendrons. Other immense plants which have no direct descendants
were the Sigillarias and the Lomatophylos. With its flexible, fluted
and checkered stems, saw-edged leaves, and hanging garlands of
parasitic Ferns, the carboniferous forest presented a remarkable scene.
The air was still very moist, covering the entire earth with a
permanent fog and a uniform temperature. It is said that certain
present-day islands in the Pacific Ocean approximate these ancient
conditions.
All the plants of that time were flowerless, and belonged to neither
the monocotyledonous nor the dicotyledonous classes, which include the
greater number of families today. Thanks to many excellent specimens
found in coal mines, it is possible for scientists to classify as many
as five hundred families. It is believed that coal itself was mostly
formed from small plants, but often entire trunks of the tree-like
forms are found in bituminous strata. Bits of bark, cones and petrified
leaves have also been unearthed at different times.
In the course of evolution, the Conifer trees were the next to develop
extensively. They gained a great ascendency, but were succeeded by
Palms, Alders, Cypress and Elms. By the Miocene period, all the
forms known in tropic Africa today had come into existence, but were
restricted by no such regional limitations as they labour under now.
Oaks and Palms, Birches and Bamboos, Elms and Laurels grew side by
side. The Palms reached as far north as Bohemia, Switzerland and
Belgium. Maples, Lindens, Planes, Spruces, Magnolias, Persimmons
and Pines flourished in Greenland. The Silver Fir and the Southern
Cypress advanced to within two hundred leagues of the North Pole.
The California Redwoods and Sequoias are survivors of a race which
flourished in this age.
Man came very late in the earth’s evolution, but he has had a profound
effect upon the plant world. His most noteworthy feat has been to take
comparatively weak plants like the grains and, for his own purposes,
give them large areas in which to grow. Wheat, Maize, Yams and Tobacco
became widely diffused as cultivated plants before the historic era. It
is probable that Rice and the Legumes were first domesticated in Asia;
Barley and Wheat in Egypt; and Maize, Potatoes, Yams and Manioc in
America.
The origin and development of plants is a fascinating study. So
authentic are the records which they have left in the eternal rocks
that we have little difficulty in reconstructing their entire race
history.
[Illustration: THE LIFE OF A DAISY IS SPENT IN BRIGHTENING OUR FIELDS
AND PASTURES]