LIFE OF A PLANT 
The cycle of plant life can be illustrated by 
any dicotyledonous, herbacious annual. If one 
is so inclined he may hark back to his high 
school days and plant a few Beans in a box as a 
practical illustration of the facts stated here. 
The first action of the planted Bean is to ab- 
sorb water to a prodigious amount, and so wake 
the quiescent life forces which may have been 
slumbering within it for years. It is a law of 
animal and vegetable life that all vital pro- 
cesses must be performed in solution. With- 
out water, life is dead or somnolent. 
When Nature made the Bean, she left a small 
opening or window in its skin-wall called the 
micropyle. ‘Through this opening of the water- 
swollen seed, now issue two pale sprouts. One 
is long and pointed; it is the radicle or incipient 
root. The other is stubbier and is tipped by a 
cluster of folded, yellow-green leaves; it is the 
plumule or incipient stem. With unerring ex- 
actness, the radicle grows down into the soil 
and the plumule feels its way up into the air. 
By this time, the seed has burst its walls and 
split into two halves, which indicates that it be- 
longs to the dicotyledonous group of plants. As 
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