56 



The Living Plant 



fact not at all bad for illumination, since diffused light can pen- 

 etrate rather deeply among them, while the sun, in its daily swing 

 through the heavens, slants its beams at times to the innermost 

 parts of them all. The typical linear shape is actually realized 

 in a great many leaves, of which our figure 1 1 shows a few (/, g, h) ; 

 and it is shown conventionalized in figure 13, b. The association 

 of linear shape with a crowding of leaves into dense-radiating 

 heads is found typically developed in a good many plants, such as 



Fig. 12. — The three types of plant form with which are associated the three fundamental 

 types of leaf shape. On the left is the trailing Garden Nasturtium, in the middle, 

 the half-desert Cordyline, on the right the typical woods-plant Ficus religiosus. 



Spanish Bayonets, and the remarkable Tree Yucca of the deserts, 

 in Century Plants, the ornamental Cordylines (figure 12), and 

 some of the Bunch Grasses. The association of the linear form 

 with parallel-standing leaves is realized in the Flags and Cat- 

 tails of stream margins, and especially in the Grasses of the 

 meadows, which thus crowd a vast number of leaves into a lim- 

 ited area. And another phase of the very same thing is presented 

 by some of our evergreen trees, with their linear or needle-shaped 



