grasses of maine. 3, 



The Plan of Structure of the Grasses. 



Every plant is a living witness of a creative plan. Examine 

 a grass plant, and the plan of its structnre is seen to be fixed 

 by a simple mathematical law, which applies to every part, 

 the root, the stem, the leaf, the flower, the seed. Each is 

 constructed and arranged by that same law, and by it is fixed 

 the form and shape and the precise place each is to occupy. 

 The leaves, lance-like, alternate, and two-ranked, always ; 

 while those of a true weed are in three ranks, an apple in five, 

 a plantain in eight, and so on in the same numerical progres- 

 sion. 



Measure the distance around the stem of a grass, or the 

 stalk of a weed, or the trunk of a tree, and the circumfer- 

 ence of each, describes a circle that every school-boy knows is 

 divided into 360 equal jDarts, however large or however small 

 the circle may be. With a grass measuring around the stem 

 from the first leaf at precisely 180 spaces, is the point of at- 

 tachment of the second leaf, and at 180 spaces more is the 

 third leaf, which is vertically over the first leaf. With a true 

 weed the second leaf is one-third of the way around, or 120 

 spaces from each other, so that the fourth leaf is over the first ; 

 with a plantain the second leaf is one-eighth the way around, 

 or at 45 spaces, bringing the ninth leaf over the first. Of the 

 tens of thousands of plants, the true grasses have their leaves 

 at the greatest possible divergence, or half on one side of the 

 stem and the rest on the other side. 



The stalk of a grass has joints ; the stalk of a weed has 

 none. (The "Wandering Jew," a cryptogamous or flowerless 

 plant, is jointed.) A grass has as many leaves as it has joints, 

 and the leaf can be taken ofi" without splitting or tearing it, 

 excepting where it is fastened at the joint. Plants, not grasses, 

 are covered or surrounded by an epidermis or skin, which 

 tears or splits in taking olf, like the bark from a cedar tree. 



With many of the different grasses, the resemblance is so 

 very close that botanists only can tell "which is which." Bot- 

 anists say that red-top and Rhode Island bent are identical. 

 Practical men say they are not, and no theory can dispute an 



