The Study of Plant Life

When you plan an excursion do not take your collecting tin and a “Flora” in which to look up the names of all you find, and then imagine that you are fully prepared for a day’s...

If you have ever noticed a pea-flower fading, you will have seen that from its heart there grows a little green pea pod which ripens till there are full-grown peas in it (~see~...

In the last chapter we noticed a few of the many facts which show us that a close relation exists between the plants and the nature of the land on which they grow. We may now tr...

In our study of plants up to the present, we have only looked at their structures from the outside. We have examined the form, uses, and life of the parts of their bodies withou...

As we have already found out, water is one of the things which are necessary for the well-being of plants. Seedlings can begin to sprout only when they are well supplied with it...

The proper time to study buds in nature is the spring, but then you will have to wait long to see all the different stages of their slow unfolding. But they can be made to open...

In a young holly, and many other plants, we find growing out from the central stem smaller side branches which bear the leaves. As we have found already (Chapter VI.), the leave...

Within the flowers we saw, protected and shut in, the carpels or seed-box, within which are the very young structures which will become seeds. Now let us watch them develop. In...

If we wish to follow the whole life of a plant, we cannot do better than begin by watching the baby plant “hatching” out from its seed at the beginning of its active life.

In the full grown plant we also find much starch; in fact, nearly all the parts of plants which we eat as food contain large quantities of starch, as you can test with iodine in...

When once the young plants start growing under suitable conditions they steadily get bigger. At first sight they appear to grow equally all over, stretching out in each directio...

The experiments you have just done show that plants absolutely require the mineral salts dissolved in the water of the soil or of their food solutions. Yet although these salts...

We do not see plants growing under quite natural conditions in the hedges and ditches, because they are put there by man in the first instance, and are continually kept in order...

If we examine the plants of any district, we find that a number of outside influences affect them very greatly. The most important of these are the physical geography and geolog...

If you have a garden of your own, or have even watched another person gardening, you must have found out that it is not always an easy thing to get rid of the weeds, and that wh...

=Perhaps there is no family of plants so easy to recognise as the ferns.= It is nearly always a simple matter to know whether or not a plant is a fern, for although there are hu...

If you go along the lanes and in the gardens in the height of summer when it is hot and dry and the sun beats on the plants all day, you may see them beginning to wither for wan...

If you go into a wood, or even a thicket, in summer, you can see how the leaves of the big trees make, what is for us, a delightful shade. But look at the ground under these tal...

The word “moorland” brings at once to the mind’s eye great stretches of land which the farmer has left practically untouched. It is not like a woodland, for the plants are all s...

When we were experimenting on the building of starchy food in leaves (Chapter VI.) we saw how very important and even essential light is for the activity of the plant, and it is...

While we have been examining plants to find out some of the facts about their other life properties, we have at the same time seen many cases of movement in their different parts.

We call a plant or animal a ~Parasite~ when it does no food-building for itself, but adapts its whole structure to obtain and use the food made by the work of other plants or an...

Sandy shores with dunes are so common round Britain that you will probably have opportunities of studying them. Did you ever notice with any care what kind of plants grow on the...

All the plants which grow in the sea are hastily grouped together by most people under the name “seaweeds.” We know that there are many kinds of seaweeds, and yet even to one wh...

The relation between flowers and insects is one of mutual help and advantage, and therefore is quite different from that in the cases where the animals eat the plants or vice ve...

As we have just seen, young seedlings are supplied with stores of food, starch, and other things, which are packed in their cotyledons and are used up by them as they grow. But...

If you were asked to give =the signs of life in an animal=, it is likely that you would think at once of =its power of breathing, eating, growing, and moving=. Now when we ask t...

When we were on the moors we noticed that we may sometimes find plants being actually turned to stone under our eyes (~see~ p. 156). These are plants which are living at the pre...

=The last big family of plants is that containing the simplest plants of all.= They are often very small and apparently unimportant, sometimes so small that we cannot study them...

The water of a natural pond is crowded with plant-life. Do not go to one in a London park, which is cleaned out by the County Council at intervals, but to one which is left to i...

Now let us see in what way the leaves are arranged on the stem. If you pick a branch of dead nettle you will see that the leaves are attached by their stalks to the stem in pair...

Since trees such as the oak, beech, and lime all belong to the family of flowering plants, you may be surprised to find that the pine-trees are separated from them. Yet all the...

As a rule, plants are the sufferers and are eaten by animals, but there are cases known in which this state of things is reversed; the plants catch and devour the tinier animals...

The late spring and summer are the best times to study leaves, for, as you must have noticed, the woods begin to lose their green in the autumn, and the leaves have fallen in th...

Many people do not realise that plants are alive. This mistake is due to the fact that plants are not so noisy and quick in their ways as animals, and therefore do not attract s...

=Mosses form another big family=, the members of which are generally =easy to recognise=, even when you know little about them, because they all have a very strong family likene...

=All the plants which have flowers are put into one big family=, about which you already know a good deal, because nearly all the plants we have studied up to the present have b...

If you go out into the garden, or fields and woods in summer, and look around you at the plants, you will find that nearly all of them are flowering, or have flower-buds, or hav...

CHAP. PAGE I. Introductory 1 II. Signs of Life 4 III. Seeds and Seedlings 8 IV. Food Materials of the Older Plant--1. In the Soil 14 V. Food Materials of the Older Plant--2. In...

XXVIII. Hedges and Ditches 145 XXIX. Moorland 153 XXX. Ponds 159 XXXI. Along the Shore 165 XXXII. In the Sea 173 XXXIII. Plants of Long Ago 178 XXXIV. Physical Geography and Pla...

XVIII. For Protection against Loss of Water 99 XIX. Specialisation for Climbing 104 XX. Parasites 109 XXI. Plants which eat Insects 114 XXII. Flower Structures in Relation to In...