Dr. A. Braun on the Vegetable Individual. 



,^aj^l have the power of reproducing the plant*. This is the 

 foundation of the Schultz-Schultzenstein-ian doctrine of ana- 

 phytons ; viz. those vegetable members " which, even when sepa- 

 rated from the plant, continue to live, bud, and developef/' and 

 which are hence regarded as the individuals proper, as the true 

 elementary forms or morphological elements ; and it is by various 

 combinations of these that the organs (commonly so-called), root, 

 stalk and leaf, are formed, by the repetition of which the whole 

 plant is built up and indefinitely renewed. 



But where are the limits of the anaphytons ? How shall lines 

 be drawn to include all the buds of the root, stalk and leaf, from 

 which new formations may spring? Aub. du Petit-Thouars J, 

 ;yf\io had already developed doctrines similar to those of the ana- 

 phyton-theory, attempts to draw the line between individuals by 

 means of the cellular tissue, regarding every vascular bundle as 

 an individual, since it has in itself, and independently of all 

 others, the means of its growth, its preservation, and the repro- 

 duction of new bundles. But it is difficult to perceive how, in 

 such a view, the labyrinth of anastomosing bundles (not less 

 complicated in the majority of petioles than in most reticulated 

 leaves) can be disentangled and resolved into separate indivi- 

 duals, and why the same independence and the same rank should 

 not be allowed to the parts of the vascular bundles. And how 

 shall we regard the lower plants, which have no fibres at all ? 

 If our conclusions are to be anything more than mere arbitrary 

 assumptions, we must go still farther; and we shall find no 

 halting- place till we reach the celt, the true seat of every reno- 

 vation in the plant, the starting-point of all non-sexual increase §, 



* Aristotle himself says that plants possess the power of reproducing 

 " stalk and root " in every one of their parts {navraxri yap exei koI pi^av 

 Koi KavKbv dvvapiv. Vit. long, et brev. c. 6. p. 467). 



t Schultz, Die Anaphytose (1848), and System der Morphologic (1847). 

 The passage quoted is taken from his later work, Verjungung in Pflan- 

 zenreich (1851). The remark made above, when treating of the members 

 of the petiole, holds good here. The so-called anaphyta can by no means 

 grow into new plants themselves ; on the contrary, the new plant is pro- 

 duced as a germ, which is not identical with the anaphytons. 



X Essais sur la Vegetation consideree dans le developpement des 

 bourgeons (1809), of. e.ff, p. 174. "C'est done le bourgeon en qui reside 

 toute I'energie vegetale ; aussi le regarde-t-on depuis longtemps comme un 

 individu .... D'apres les principes que j'ai developpes dans mes prece- 

 dens memoires, il faut aller plus loin, car je crois que ehaque fibre vege- 

 tale est un individu, puisqu'elle a en soi, independamment des autres, les 

 moyens d'accroissement, de conservation et de reproduction." 



§ Earlier investigations into the origin of adventitious buds hud made it 

 probable that, in its formation, each new shoot arises from a single cell. 

 The first convincing proof of this fact was given by Ilofmeister (Ver- 

 gleichende Untersuchung u. s. w. der Couiferen, p. 94), in Equisetum. The 

 propagating cells on the fohage and edges of the leaves of Liverwort, which 



