'*^c. 





The Plant World 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF POPULAR BOTANY. 



Vol. l JANUARY, 1898. No. 4. 



STIPULES. 



By A. A. Tyler. 



EVERY lover of plants is familiar with those little appendages 

 which form the wings at the base of the petiole of a rose-leaf, 

 that in the buds of the tulip-tree in spring-time form such a 

 dainty little case for the curiously folded infant leaf, or in the 

 locust appear as spines warning off predacious animals and pricking the 

 hands of one ambitious to carry home a bouquet of its fragrant white 

 blossoms as do the prickles of the rose, more famed in poetical allu- 

 sion. These appendages since the days of Linnaeus, that great fore- 

 bear of botanists, have borne the name of stipules and have often de- 

 manded the close attention of one who, book in hand, would decide 

 whether he has found Porter ant liiis trifoliata or stipulata, or is lost 

 among the mazes of the willow tribe. 



Farther than this, perhaps few have gone or stopped to enquire 

 what may be the purpose of these little appendages, why they came 

 to be, and how it is that in some families of plants there are none at 

 all, while in others there are few species, if any, without them. To 

 the ever curious lover of nature the proposal of such questions as 

 these at once arouses the innate desire to know, which leads on to the 

 slow but sure unraveling of one after another of the secrets of the 

 world about us. 



What then, first, are the stipules for ? Some will have noticed, 

 when drawn by the warmth of spring-time days to seek again the 

 woodland paths, the biirsting buds of oaks and beeches, and how the 

 young leaves are covered and intermingled with long, narrow, brown 

 or reddish scales which fall away as fast as the loosening of the parts 

 of the growing bud permits. These are the stipules which on exam- 

 ination will be found in pairs with each young leaf, and which during 

 the winter months have protected the buds from cold and wet. If 

 now we pass on to mid-summer and visit the vegetable garden where 



