II] BRANCHING 29 



bulb-leaf of the year before, and other buds are found in 

 its leaf-axils. 



The case is different in degree only where, as in 

 Corypha and Agave, the main axis developed from the 

 seedling, after producing leaves only and no branches, 

 for many years, is brought to an end by the sudden 

 development of a terminal branch-system, each twig of 

 which is arrested as a flower, and then dies down. This 

 leads us to see that it is only true to say that palms do 

 not branch if we exclude the flowering branches : as matter 

 of fact they produce year after year branch-systems which 

 are devoted entirely to the formation of flowers (inflores- 

 cences). 



In the vast majority of ordinary plants the course of 

 events is that some branches bear flowers, and usually 

 terminate their growth with them, while others bear 

 leaves in the ordinary sense of the word ; and since 

 branches do not occur in the axils or on the nodes of 

 the flower, but are common in connection with ordinary 

 leaves, we are struck with the peculiarities of floral stems 

 as contrasted with foliage stems, even more than with the 

 differences between the ordinary and dwarf-shoots in the 

 foliar regions. As we shall see later, however, one and 

 the same principle lies at the bottom of all the different 

 kinds of branching, and it is only a convention for pur- 

 poses of expediency which drives us to employ special 

 terms for the cases described above. 



That the primary purpose of branching is to expose 

 the leaves or other organs more effectively to light and 

 air may be directly observed by comparing the behaviour 

 of trees, shrubs, and herbs in various situations, and is 

 especially obvious in forests of mixed species where some 

 plants become so over-topped by the more rapid growth 

 of others that they die, owing to their foliage receiving 



