»«1illlMi «MlllMliftWMilMllMUJJWIIiiJ i mifl *<^ -l-jfi^l^^-^^^i^ii*^ t-r LEMENTS OF BOTAN'- ../ \ ?' x<,iiii-ayay,^^y,!iayj»MiimyA'yjiX^ BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Stenrg W. Sage 1S91 4.f..-^.ir.ff.^. /a/.(/^..6 Cornell University Library arV19082 Elements of botany. 3 1924 031 489 267 olin,anx \B Cornell University M Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031489267 ELEMENTS OF BOTANY J. Y. BERGEN, A.M. rNSTKUCTOB IN BIOLOGY, BNOLISH HIGH SCHOOL, BOSTON Boston, U.S.A., and London PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY 1896 ^•'^4^5'o4' COPYKISHT, 1896, BY J. Y. BERGEN ALL la&HTS RESERVED PREFACE. The present text-book is, for the most part, an expansion of the manuscript notes which have for some years formed the basis of the botany-teaching in the Boston English High School. These notes were drawn up by Mr. Samuel F. Tower and the author, for the purpose of establishing what seemed to them a suitable half-year course in botany for pupils of the entering class in that school. It will be found that this book differs from most American text-books designed for use in secondary schools, in endeavor- ing^ to combine in one volume the simplest possible directions for laboratory work with an outline of vegetable anatomy and physiology, and a brief statement of the principles of botani- cal classification. An account of the functions of the tissues or organs described usually follows as closely as may be the account of the parts in question. The attempt is made to discuss plants dynamically rather than statically, to view them as contestants in the struggle for existence, and to con- sider some of the conditions of success and failure in the vegetable world. While the determination of species by means of an artifical key is illustrated, preparation for this process is by no means the main object or even a principal end which the author has had in view. The tendency of botany-teaching seems to be more and more away from the old ideal of enabling one's pupils to run down a species as expeditiously as possible, and teaching them how to preserve a properly ticketed memento of the chase. IV PREFACE. The illustrations drawn from nature, or redrawn expressly for this book, are mostly by Orville P. Williams or Francis M. West, recent graduates of the English High School. The woodcut of Monotropa is from a photograph kindly loaned for the purpose by its maker, Eev. E. S. Morison. Large numbers of ilhistrations have been reproduced from the fol- lowing works, which are named in about the order of the extent to which they have been drawn upon : Le Maout and Decaisne's Traite General de Boianique. Thomd's Structural and Physiological Botany. Tschirch's Angewandte Pflanzenanatomie. Strasburger, Noll, Schenk, and Schimper's Lehrbuch der Botanik. Kerner's Pflanzenleben. Figuier's Vegetable World. Behrens's Text-book of General Botany. Sachs's Text-book of Botany. The author is to a less extent indebted for cuts to the works of Brown, Carpenter, Darwin, Lindley, Lubbock, Potonie, Strasburger, Hartig, Host, Kny, Detmer, Martius, Baillon, and others. Por most of the subject-matter of this book^—-though not for the order and mode of treatment — the writer is of course indebted to a multitude of sources, only a very few of which are indicated in the subjoined bibliography. Personal assist- ance has been freely rendered him by Prof. George L. Goodale, Dr. Benjamin L. Eobinson, Curator of the Gray Herbarium, and Mr. A. B. Seymour of the Cryptogamic Herbarium of Harvard University. Prof. George J. Pierce of Indiana State University has given valuable aid in regard to some physiological questions. Prof. William P. Ganong of Smith College has done so much for the book that if it should prove useful its value will be largely due -to his suggestive criticisms. Thanks are due for the careful proof-reading of PREFACE. V Prof. George G. GrofE of Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pa., Miss Anna A. Schryver of the Michigan State Normal School, Ypsilanti, Mr. Hermann von Schrenk of the St. Louis Manual Training School, and Mr. Marcus L. Glazer of the St. Cloud., Minn., High School. Part II consists of a very brief key to some of the com- moner orders of Phanerogams and descriptions of the char- acteristics of these orders with a few genera and species under each. The key is adapted (by permission) from the one in use in the elementary course in botany in Harvard University, and the descriptions were compiled by the author from the most accessible recent floras of the northern United States east of the hundredth parallel. The attempt has been made to simplify the language and condense the descriptions, but not so much as to make them hopelessly bald and unread- able. The plants chosen to constitute this greatly abbreviated flora are those which bloom during some part of the latter half of the ordinary school year, and which have a rather wide territorial range. Enough forms have been described to afford ample drill in the determination of species. Gray's Manual of Botany or Field, Forest and Garden Botany will of course be employed by the student who wishes to become familiar with the flora of the region here touched upon. Those species which occur in the north-eastern United States only as cultivated plants are so designated, but it has not seemed best to take the necessary space to assign precise ranges or habitats to the native or introduced plants heje described. OONTEISTTS. Part I. CHAPTEE I. PAGES The Seed and its Germination 4-11 CHAPTER n. The Parts op the Seedling ; its Development . 12-17 CHAPTEK III. Storage op Nourishment in, the Seed ..... 18-26 CHAPTER IV. EooTS 26-37 chapter v. Stems 38-51 chapter vi. Structure op the Stem ........ 52-66 CHAPTER VII. Living Parts op the Stem. Work op the Stem . 67-76 CHAPTER Vin. Buds 77-84 CHAPTEE IX. Leaves ........... 85-93_ CHAPTER X. Leap Arrangement por Exposure to Sun and Air. Move- ments op Leaves and Shoots 94-101 CHAPTEE XI. Leaves of Peculiar Forms and Uses ..... 102-107 nil CONTENTS. CHAPTER XII. PAGES Minute Structdre of Leaves; Functions op Leaves . 108-125 CHAPTER XIII. Protoplasm and its Properties 126-130 CHAPTER XIV. Inflorescence, or Arrangement of Flowers on the Stem 131-136 CHAPTER XV. The Study of Typical Flowers 137-141 CHAPTER XVI. Plan and Structure of the Flower and its Organs . 142-151 CHAPTER XVII. True Nature of Floral Organs ; Details of their Struc- ture 152-157 CHAPTER XVni. Fertilization ; Transfer op Pollen ; Protection op Pollen 158-181 CHAPTER XIX. The Study of Typical Fruits 182-184 CHAPTER XX. The Fruit 185-196 CHAPTER XXI. The Struggle foe Existence and the Survival op the Fittest . 197-212 CHAPTER XXII. The Classification of Plants 213-218 CHAPTER XXni. I Some Types of Flowerlbss Plants 219-245 Part II. Key and Flora 1_51 ELEMEI^TS OF BOTAI^T. INTRODUCTOEY. "Botany is the science which endeavors to answer every reasonahle question about plants." i The plant is a living being, provided generally with many parts, called organs, which it uses for taking in nourishment, for breathing, for protection against its enemies, and for reproducing itself and so keeping up the numbers of its own kind. The study of the individual plant therefore embraces a variety of topics, and the examination of its relation to others introduces many more subjects. Morphology, or the science of form, structure, and so on, deals with the plant without much regard to its character as a living thing. Under this head are studied the forms of plants and the various shapes or disguises which the same sort of organ may take in different kinds of plants, their gross structure, their microscopical structure, their classifica- tion, and the successive stages in the history of the germs from which all but a few of the very simplest plants are formed. Geographical Distribution, or botanical geography, discusses the range of the various kinds of plants over the earth's sur- face. Another subdivision of botany, usually studied along with geology, describes the history of plant life on the earth from the appearance of the first plants until the present time. > Professor George L. Goodale. 2 ELEMENTS OF BOTANY. Vegetable Physiology treats of the plant in action, how it lives, breathes, feeds, grows, and produces others like itself, and how it adjusts itself to the conditions which surround it. This division of the science also considers how the plant attacks other plants or animals (as do mildews and disease- germs respectively, for exafnple), or how it is attacked by them, what are its diseases and how its life is terminated by these, by old age, or by external causes like frost or drought. Many of the topics suggested in this outline cannot well be studied in the high school. There is not usually time to take up botanical geography or to do much more than men- tion the important subject of Economic Botany, the study of the uses of plants to man. It ought, however, to be possible for the student to learn in his high school course a good deal about the simpler parts of morphology and of vegetable physiology. One does not become a botanist — not even much of an amateur in the subject — by reading books about botany.