494 FULLER 



of different types of commercial fertilizers ; when such botanists teach general 

 botany, it is clear that fertilizers receive brief mention, if any. One of the 

 legitimate ways of vitalizing general botany is emphasis upon its pragmatic 

 involvements. I do not suggest for a moment that general botany should 

 become horticulture or economic botany, but I affirm my belief that we can 

 make our subject more appealing and more significant to undergraduate 

 minds if we utilize every opportunity to demonstrate the practical importance 

 of botany, emphasizing always, of course, the "pure science" bases of prac- 

 tical applications. 



3. We have too often turned out of our graduate schools plant scientists 

 whose educational backgrounds have been extremely specialized (from the 

 semantic viewpoint I prefer "fragmented" to "specialized") and who, really 

 not botanists in the best sense of that label, are poorly equipped to teach 

 general botany. Yet general botany, to its detriment, is sometimes taught 

 by persons so narrowly educated in plant science. We should be more precise 

 and more realistic in planning the graduate work of young people who are 

 likely to teach general botany to ensure that they acquire broad education in 

 botany and in related sciences, as well as specialized education in their 

 research fields. If we cannot always do both, then we should take care that 

 the ultra-fragmented product is not assigned the task of teaching general 

 botany. We should not dream of turning a paleobotanist loose upon a research 

 project in enzymology, nor should we assign a plant nutritionist to a problem 

 on phylogenetic implications of wood anatomy, but too often we assume 

 that a graduate degree in plant science, irrespective of the formal education 

 which led to that degree, automatically fits a man to teach general botany 

 sans odeur. Sometimes it works, but too often it doesn't. 



4. We have perhaps become too much concerned with the insides of plants 

 in our teaching of general botany. Never have so many drawn and quartered 

 sections of so many plants been examined, studied, and sketched by so many 

 students. Important up to a point, such study has often resulted in neglect 

 of a holistic, or synthetic, study of plants, a kind of study possibly more 

 important in general botany than the fragmented, analytic study so often 

 emphasized. The study of whole plants, of course, means the study of living, 

 growing plants in both greenhouse and the out of doors. It involves further 

 the culture, the handling, and the care of living plants by students. Treat- 

 ment of grafting in a lecture or in a textbook can never approach in interest 

 for students the opportunity for them to make their own grafts of living 

 plants, nor can the study of germinating seeds and of seedlings, brought into 

 a laboratory and carefully rationed cafeteria-style, ever equal in educational 

 value or in interest the actual planting of seeds by students in a greenhouse 

 bench and the subsequent observation of seedlings growing from these seeds. 

 In developing further our study of whole living plants, we need to increase 

 the numbers of field trips in our general botany courses and to plan more 



