CHAPTER XIX 
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTS? 
249. Natural Groups of Plants. — One does not need to 
be a botanist in order to recognize the fact that plants 
naturally fall into groups which resemble each other pretty 
closely, that these groups may be combined into larger 
ones the members of which are somewhat alike, and so on. 
For example, all the bulb-forming spring buttercups ? which 
grow in a particular field may be so much alike in leaf, 
flower, and fruit that the differences are hardly worth 
mentioning. The tall summer buttercups ? resemble each 
other closely, but are decidedly different from the bulbous 
spring-flowering kind, and yet are enough like the latter 
to be ranked with them as buttercups. The yellow 
water-buttercups* resemble in their flowers the two 
kinds above mentioned, but differ from them greatly in - 
habit of growth and in foliage, while still another, a 
very small-flowered kind,® might fail to be recognized 
as a buttercup at all. | 
The marsh marigold, the hepatica, the rue anemone, 
and the anemone all have a family resemblance to butter- 
cups,® and the various anemones by themselves form 
another group like that of the buttercups. 
1 See Warming and Potter’s Systematic Botany, Strasburger, Noll, Schenk, 
and Schimper’s Text-Book of Botany, Part II, or Kerner and Oliver, Vol. II, 
pp. 616-790. 2? R. bulbosus. 3 R.acris. 4 R. multifidus. * R. abortivus. 
6 Fresh specimens or herbarium specimens will show this. 
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