388 Dr. A. Braun on the Vegetable Individual, 



tainly dates as far back as Gleditsch's time, and his directorship 

 commenced in 1 744. The main stem is not more than 33 inches 

 in circumference at eight inches above the ground, close under 

 the place where the first branches originate : the centre-piece of 

 the crown which belongs immediately to the stem is only 9 feet 

 high, and has been dying off during several years, while the 

 maximum diameter, from S.W. to N.E., of the hundred-rooted 

 crown, which has spread out over the ground by the declination 

 of the branches, measures 35 feet : the entire circumference of 

 the crown, which amounts to about 100 feet, would be still more 

 considerable if it had been permitted to spread on every side, 

 and if the branches on the N.E. side had not been removed at 

 an early day. 



What has just been said of trees admits of no doubt as regards 

 perennial herbs {plantce redivivce) with subterranean creeping 

 stems or stolons. Such plant-stocks as those of the well-known 

 Paris, Anemone nemorosa, Convallaria majalis, Asperula odorata, 

 are undoubtedly exposed to none but a casual death *. All 

 plants which renew the cycle of vegetative life repeatedly and 

 without any determinate limits to their existence, and which I 

 would hence call anabiotiCf cannot therefore be considered simple 

 iadividualsf. 

 \:At first sight the case seems to be different in the haplobioticX 



* The same relations of great unlimited age are found in polyps which 

 form stocks. Cf. Ehrenberg, Abh. d. Akad.-for 1832, p. 382, 420, where, 

 among others, stocks of Mseandriae and Faviae are referred to, larger than 

 a cord of wood — which may readily be supposed to have been seen by 

 Pharaoh. 



t I pass over the further question, intimately connected with this sub- 

 ject, whether the composite plant-stock itself, with all its subordinate ge- 

 nerations, with all its possible divisions, — viz. the individual in the most 

 comprehensive sense (in which Gallesio conceived it), — has not a determinate 

 term of life, though not easy to be ascertained, on account of the narrow 

 space of time accessible to our direct experience. 



X DeCandolle calls anabiotic growths polycarpic, and haplobiotic growths 

 monocarpic, terms which are useless from their ambiguity. With an equally 

 inappropriate choice of terms, he divides the first (Phys. Veg. ii. p. 73) 

 into caulocarpic and rhizocarpic, according as the stem which produces the 

 fruit is permanent, or dies off down to the root ; but the latter in fact never 

 takes place in perennial growths ; for in such cases the life of the plant- 

 stock is preserved, not by the mere root alone, but by a subterranean por- 

 tion of the stem. It is one of the most remarkable confusions which a 

 waat of true biological ideas has engendered, that DeCandolle should have 

 regarded the simplest and most natural circumstance in the plant's life, — 

 its death after having attained the goal of its development, — as an un- 

 natural, and to some extent casual occurrence, — as a kind of sickness com- 

 parable to the succumbing of the mother in childbed, which he accounts 

 for by the rapaciousness of the flowers and seeds. Roej)er, however, in a 

 note to his translation of the above work, justly remarks that there are 

 annuals with double flowers which die oif to the ground although they 



