CHAPTER VIII 



SPRING AND ITS STUDIES ; GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 

 AND WORLD -LANDSCAPES ; SEEDLING AND BUD 



Spi'ing Studies — ]\Iode of Study in Botany — Phenology and Dis- 

 tribution — Aspects of Nature, Vegetation and Landscapes of 

 the World — Germination — Buds and Bud-Scales — Aj-range- 

 inent of Leaves in the Bud. 



The study of plants is naturally begun in spring. It is, 

 indeed, the supreme advantage of a temperate climate, — one 

 which richly compensates in beauty and even in interest 

 for a verdure less exuberant, a variety less Protean than 

 that of the tropical forest, — that the procession of the seasons 

 is ever before us. Life is, indeed, universally rhythmic, in 

 animal as in plant ; but the plant is more passive and 

 plastic to its conditions, more under the sway of environ- 

 mental change, and hence this seasonal change of plant 

 life becomes the more impressive spectacle of living nature. 

 See the tide of life set in with a flood in spring, filling every 

 corner of the earth with sprouting seeds and shooting stems, 

 and crowding, spreading, rippling leaves ; how as the russet 

 underwood warms to the fuller sun through trees still bare, 

 it glows with bright golden patches of lesser celandine ; 

 how its dead leaves silently sink under a restless foam- 

 tipped sea of green anemone ; how every mossy bank is 



