THE PLANT AS A WHOLE 



12. Many herbaceous perennials have short generations. 

 They become weak with one or two seasons of flowering 

 and gradually die out. Thus common red clover begins to 

 fail after the second year. Gardeners know that the best 

 bloom of hollyhock, larkspur, pink, and many other 

 plants, is secured when the plants are only two or three 

 years old. 



13. Herbaceous perennials that die away each season 

 to bulbs, corms or tubers, are sometimes called pseud-annuals 

 (that is, false annuals). Of such are lily, crocus, onion, 



potato. 



14. Plants that 

 are normally peren- 

 nial may become 

 annual in a shorter- 

 season climate by 

 being killed by 

 frost, rather than 

 > by dying naturally 

 at the end of a 

 season of growth. 

 Such plants are 

 called plur-annuals 

 in the short-season 

 region. Many 

 warm -region per- 

 5. A shrub or bush. Dogwood osier. ennials are plur- 



annuals when grown in the North, but they are treated as 

 true annuals because they ripen sufficient of their crop the 

 same season in which the seeds are sown to make them 

 worth cultivating, as tomato, red pepper, castor-bean. 



15. Woody or ligneous plants are usually longer lived 

 than herbs. Those that remain low and produce several 

 or many similar shoots from the base are called shrubs, as 

 lilac, rose, elder, osier. (Fig. 5.) Low and thick shrubs are 



