



Produced by Curtis Weyant, Stephen H. Sentoff and the
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GRAY'S LESSONS IN BOTANY

REVISED EDITION




THE
ELEMENTS OF BOTANY

FOR BEGINNERS AND FOR SCHOOLS


By ASA GRAY




IVISON, BLAKEMAN, AND COMPANY
NEW YORK AND CHICAGO




_Copyright_,
By Asa Gray.
1887.




PREFACE.


This volume takes the place of the author's Lessons in Botany and
Vegetable Physiology, published over a quarter of a century ago. It is
constructed on the same lines, and is a kind of new and much revised
edition of that successful work. While in some respects more extended,
it is also more concise and terse than its predecessor. This should the
better fit it for its purpose now that competent teachers are common.
They may in many cases develop paragraphs into lectures, and fully
illustrate points which are barely, but it is hoped clearly, stated.
Indeed, even for those without a teacher, it may be that a condensed is
better than a diffuse exposition.

The book is adapted to the higher schools, "How Plants Grow and Behave"
being the "Botany for Young People and Common Schools." It is intended
to ground beginners in Structural Botany and the principles of vegetable
life, mainly as concerns Flowering or Phanerogamous plants, with which
botanical instruction should always begin; also to be a companion and
interpreter to the Manuals and Floras by which the student threads his
flowery way to a clear knowledge of the surrounding vegetable creation.
Such a book, like a grammar, must needs abound in technical words, which
thus arrayed may seem formidable; nevertheless, if rightly apprehended,
this treatise should teach that the study of botany is not the learning
of names and terms, but the acquisition of knowledge and ideas. No
effort should be made to commit technical terms to memory. Any term used
in describing a plant or explaining its structure can be looked up when
it is wanted, and that should suffice. On the other hand, plans of
structure, types, adaptations, and modifications, once understood, are
not readily forgotten; and they give meaning and interest to the
technical terms used in explaining them.

In these "Elements" naturally no mention has been made of certain terms
and names which recent cryptogamically-minded botanists, with lack of
proportion and just perspective, are endeavoring to introduce into
phanerogamous botany, and which are not needed nor appropriate, even in
more advanced works, for the adequate recognition of the ascertained
analogies and homologies.

As this volume will be the grammar and dictionary to more than one or
two Manuals, Floras, etc., the particular directions for procedure which
were given in the "First Lessons" are now relegated to those works
themselves, which in their new editions will provide the requisite
explanations. On the other hand, in view of such extended use, the
Glossary at the end of this book has been considerably enlarged. It will
be found to include not merely the common terms of botanical description
but also many which are unusual or obsolete; yet any of them may now and
then be encountered. Moreover, no small number of the Latin and Greek
words which form the whole or part of the commoner specific names are
added to this Glossary, some in an Anglicized, others in their Latin
form. This may be helpful to students with small Latin and less Greek,
in catching the meaning of a botanical name or term.

The illustrations in this volume are largely increased in number. They
are mostly from the hand of Isaac Sprague.

It happens that the title chosen for this book is that of the author's
earliest publication, in the year 1836, of which copies are rarely seen;
so that no inconvenience is likely to arise from the present use of the
name.

                              ASA GRAY.

                              Cambridge, Massachusetts,
                              _March, 1887_.




CONTENTS.


                                                                  Page
SECTION I. INTRODUCTORY                                              9


SECTION II. FLAX AS A PATTERN PLANT                                 11

  Growth from the Seed, Organs of Vegetation                        11
  Blossoming, Flower, &c.                                           14


SECTION III. MORPHOLOGY OF SEEDLINGS                                15

  Germinating Maples                                                15
  Cotyledons thickened, hypogaeous in germination                    18
  Store of Food external to the Embryo                              20
  Cotyledons as to number                                           22
  Dicotyledonous and Polycotyledonous                               23
  Monocotyledonous                                                  24
  Simple-stemmed Plants                                             26


SECTION IV. GROWTH FROM BUDS; BRANCHING                             27

  Buds, situation and kinds                                         27
  Vigorous vegetation from strong Buds                              28
  Arrangement of Branches                                           29
  Non-developed, Latent, and Accessory Buds                         30
  Enumeration of kinds of B