110 THE NATURE-STUDY OF PLANTS 
annual or a biennial. In my own observation the 
seedlings that appear in the autumn or winter will 
have flowered and seeded and died before the winter 
comes round again, and so they are true annuals. 
But the late seedlings do not flower at all during their 
first summer, or before the close of that year. Like 
the Foxglove, they only make leaves, they pass through 
the winter in that stage, and they begin to blossom 
in favourable seasons at the end of April, about the 
time when the St. Robert to whom I referred has his 
annual day on April 29th. It is therefore correct to 
describe these individuals as biennial: it is again 
merely a question of the time at which the seed 
germinates. 
I have dwelt somewhat at length upon the roots 
and leaves, because these are the parts about which 
one finds least, in at any rate most books, whereas 
a great deal has been written about flowers and seeds ; 
but the reader will perhaps expect me to say something 
anent Rest and Sleep before I bring this chapter to 
a close: there is, however, extremely little to relate. 
There is of course, the winter’s rest or quiescence, 
but the plant keeps its leaves all through; it is in fact 
an evergreen, and I am pretty sure that whenever 
it is warm and light enough the great business of food 
manufacture is resumed. It is not like a tree, which 
loses all its leaves in the autumn and simpiy cannot 
go on because the factory, that is to say the green 
leaves, are no more. 
Again, there is the nightly rest when food manu- 
facture comes to a standstill, not because it may or 
may not be too cold, but because it is dark: but, as 
I pointed out before, this Rest is only partial, since a 
good deal that cannot be scen goes on inside the plant 
