156 Plants and their Ways in South Africa 



Of late years the collecting and naming of plants in schools 

 has gone out of fashion. This is unfortunate. To know the 

 name is not enough, but it helps us to know the plant. One 

 who has made a collection has found how and where the 

 plants grow, when they blossom and fruit, and it is to be hoped 

 has gained some general ideas as to how their forms and mark- 

 ings, colours, and odours are related to their benefactors of the 

 animal world. Not only the flower, but the whole aspect of the 

 plant, tells how it has survived the wind and weather, how it 

 has battled with unfavourable conditions of soil and drought 

 and its sturdier neighbours in the struggle through the ages 

 toward self-expression and perfection. It is hardly worth 

 while knowing that the stamens of some flowers are declinate 

 while others ascend and arch downward, unless we see how the 

 declinate stamens in the one serve as a resting-place for the 

 insect in lieu of the firm corolla of the other. 



The first attempt at classifying plants came about through 

 their real or supposed medicinal values. For this purpose they 

 were classified as trees, shrubs, and herbs. From the time of 

 Aristotle until the sixteenth century students began to arrange 

 plants into groups which were very artificial. The most famous 

 of these groups was that of the Swedish botanist, Linnaeus. This 

 system was used until the middle of the seventeenth century. 

 In constructing these keys, plants were grouped according to 

 some evident characters as the number of parts of the flower, 

 which enabled students to refer plants readily to their proper 

 orders. Since then efforts have been made to so classify plants 

 that those plants shall be brought together which are naturally 

 related. The study of plants has shown how they have de- 

 veloped from the simple thread-like forms which pass their entire 

 lives in water to the more conspicuous ones that live in moist 

 places but bear their spores up in the air. Later came the 

 seed-bearing plants. Of these the Gymnosperms came first, as 

 their imprints in the older rocks show. The first land plants 

 had no need to flaunt gay petals, for there were neither bees 

 nor butterflies to attract. The early Angiosperms had very 

 simple flowers with neither calyx nor corolla, as the willow and 

 wax-bush (Myrica). The flowers were imperfect as well as 



