CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES 



CHAPTER XIII. 



PLANT FAHILIES. PART I. ENDOQENS, OR 

 nONOCOTYLEDONS. 



By a plant family we do not mean a group of plants that 

 have the same parent plant, but those that resemble each 

 other in other certain ways; just as among animals the lion 

 and tiger belong to the cat family, or the wolf and coyote 

 to the dog family. Arranging plants in families is called 

 classification. It is true that the best botanists do not fully 

 agree in their way of classifying plants, still there are many 

 relationships that are easily seen, and it is a pleasure to note 

 them ; beside, one needs to know something about plant 

 families in order to use books about plants. 



The most important thing a plant does, is to produce 

 other plants ; so its way of doing this usually counts most 

 in classification. You remember that sea-mosses, mould, 

 toadstools and even ferns, grow from spores, and that spores 

 are simple plant cells, subject to very many dangers. But 

 nearly all the plants people commonly see and think of as 

 plants, produce seeds ; and a seed, as we have seen, instead 

 of being a mere cell, is a little plant, which has been formed 

 and provided with some food before leaving the parent plant. 

 So the whole plant world is divided into two great groups, 

 seedless plants and seed-bearing plants ; these groups are 

 divided into smaller groups, which are again divided, and so 

 on, long Greek or Latin names being given to all the 

 groups. 



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