126 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 



bases and perfectly straight veins are characteristic 

 of the narrow foliage of monocotyledenous plants. 

 Whether narrow or broad, the leaves borne by 

 the lily's kin have, as a rule, straight edges, plain 

 and unadorned. 



The leaves of the rose's kin are far more elabo- 

 rate in effect. Sometimes, as in the case of the 

 rose itself, each of them is "compound" made up 

 of a number of smaller leaves. Sometimes they 

 are cut into delicate lace-work, as is the foliage 

 of the yarrow and of the domestic carrot. 



Sometimes, like the leaves of the rose-geranium, 

 they are curiously slashed, and in many cases their 

 edges are daintily cut into points, teeth, or scallops. 



Their veins, as we have already observed, run 

 ' ' every- which way," and even when the larger 

 veins parallel one another with copy-book preci- 

 sion, as in the chestnut-leaves, the veinlets wander 

 here and there in graceful lawlessness. 



It is in the tissue of the stem, and in its mode of 

 growth, that the chief distinction between the two 

 greatest groups of flowering-plants is to be found. 



Next to the palmettos, which are not found in a 

 wild state north of the Carolinas, the Indian corn is 

 the largest of native monocotyledonous plants. If 

 we cut a thin, cross-wise slice out of a corn-stalk 



