^•44 



seems more likely that some species of 

 buttercup was intended. Anne Pratt, 

 author of the Flowering Plants of Great 

 Britain, also inclines to this view, but the 

 majority of Shakespearian scholars are in 

 favor of Calendula. One piece of evidence 

 seems to have been overlooked. The poet 

 makes his marigolds "Ope their golden eyes." 

 Now the question is, which of these plants 

 close at night; or was the opening an 

 assumption on the part of the poet? — The 

 American Botanist. 



GARDENERS' CHROMCLE 



THE VEINING OF LEAVES 



Only two of the great groups of plants 

 have true leaves. These are the Sperma- 

 tophytes, or flowering plants, and the 

 Pteridophytes or ferns. In the Sperma- 

 tophytes, the two divisions, monocots and 

 dicots have each a separate and distinct 

 kind of veining, and the veining of ferns 

 is different from either. It is customary 

 to distinguish these forms by saying that 

 the venation of ferns is forked, that of 

 monocots is parallel, and that of dicots is 

 netted, but this is far from correctly ex- 

 pressing it. In the netted pattern, for 

 instance, each group will be found to have 

 numerous species in which the veins form 

 a conspicuous network. The student of 

 ferns who relies upon the conventional 

 description of fern venation may be quite 

 embarrassed to find in any good fern col- 

 lection that perhaps half of the specimens 

 have netted veins instead of the forked 

 veins he expects. Notwithstanding the oc- 

 casional similarities of venation, however, 

 the leaves of ferns, monocots and dicots 

 are usually easy to distinguish. The dilfer- 

 ence is not solely in the disposition of the 

 small veins. Along with the characteris- 

 tically netted or irregular venation of 

 dicots, goes a tendency of the leaf to have 

 several series of veins branching off from 

 one another in a descending order of size 

 and this is the only plant group to be so 

 characterized. In each of the others there 

 is a main vein extending through the leaf 

 with the smaller veins in marked contrast 

 as to size. In dicots the small veins usu- 

 ally form a network with their tips free; 

 in the monocots they may form a network 

 but their tips are seldom free. In the 

 ferns, a network may occur, but if the^ tips 

 of the veins are free they often end within 

 one of the meshes formed by other veins. 

 In other specimens, however, the veins fork 

 and fork aaain wiih no signs of a network. 

 — Tlie American Botanist. 



SPORTS AND VARIETIES OF 

 TREES 



As is well known, there are many forms 

 of trees in cultivation which are not identi- 

 cal with true species. The latter comprise 

 masses of individuals all alike in character, 

 occurring in the wild state over a definite 

 region of the earth's surface. Geographical 

 varieties are sub-divisions of species, differ- 

 ing from one another in only one or two 

 characters, instead of many characters, but 

 like species definitely distributed over a dis- 

 tinct territory. The difference between a 

 true species and a geographical variety is 

 scarcely logical, and is a matter of words 

 only. Thus, the Austrian and Corsican 

 Pines may be regarded either as two dis- 

 tinct species or as two varieties of one 

 species. Inside a species there may be 

 races, namely, varieties which do not differ 

 appreciably in anatomical features, but are 

 distinct physiologically. In the widely dis- 

 tributed Pinus cylvestris, the Scots Pine, 

 there are distinct races, which behave dif- 

 ferently in various ways, as in the time of 

 opening the leaves, ripening the seed, habit. 



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