CHAPTER IX 



CHENOPODIACEAE 



BETA VULGARIS 



THERE are several varieties of Beta vulgaris which Bailey 

 (4) has divided into five cultural sections: garden beets, 

 mangels, sugar beets, chard, and foliage beets. ^ The cultivated 

 beet is an herbaceous dicotyledon which normally completes its 

 life cycle in two years; but like its wild ancestor, Beta maritima 

 Linn., the biennial habit is variable and under certain conditions 

 the plant may function as an annual or even as a perennial. When 

 growing as a biennial, the beet produces a large, succulent, fleshy 

 tap root with a short crown stem and a rosette of leaves during the 

 first season. In this phase of the vegetative cycle, large food 

 reserves are accumulated in the storage regions of the root which 

 are utilized in the second year; and, after the formation of a second 

 rosette of leaves, the plant develops a bushy shoot and produces 

 its flowering branches. These are stout and angular, and, in some 

 of the seed fields, may attain a height of 5 to 6 feet or more. 



GENERAL MORPHOLOGY 



The Fleshy Axis — Root, Hypocotyl and Stem. — The mature 

 beet of commerce is a pear-shaped or globular fleshy axis made up 

 of a crown, neck, and a more or less elongated tap root. The crown 

 is an unelongated stem from which the rosette of leaves arises, 

 while the smooth hypocotyledonary neck below it, which is 

 devoid of lateral roots, forms the upper portion of the thickened 

 axis. The lower root-like part of the axis is described by Weaver 

 (xo) as follows, 



"The sugar beet has a strong, deep, very fleshy taproot, which in 

 moist soil grows rapidly and almost vertically downward, reaching 



1 Much of the anatomical work reported in this chapter, especially that of Artschwager, 

 was done in connection with the sugar beet group, but some of the investigations were con- 

 cerned with table varieties of the Detroit Dark Red type. 



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