242 Dr. A. Braun on the Vegetable Individual. 



rnay have the power of reproducing the plant*. This is the 

 foundation of the Schultz-Schultzenstein-ian doctrine of ana- 

 phytons ; viz. those vegetable members " which, even when sepa- 

 rated from the plant, continue to live, bud, and developef," and 

 which are hence regarded as the individuals proper, as the true 

 elementary forms or morphological elements ; and it is by various 

 combinations of these that the organs (commonly so-called), root, 

 stalk and leaf, are formed, by the repetition of which the whole 

 plant is built up and indefinitely renewed. 



But where are the limits of the auaphytons ? How shall lines 

 be drawn to include all the buds of the root, stalk and leaf, from 

 which new formations may spring? Aub. du Petit-ThouarsJ, 

 who had already developed doctrines similar to those of the ana- 

 phyton-theory, attempts to draw the line between individuals by 

 means of the cellular tissue, regarding every vascular bundle as 

 an individual, since it has in itself, and independently of all 

 others, the means of its growth, its preservation, and the repro- 

 duction of new bundles. But it is difficult to perceive how, in 

 such a view, the labyrinth of anastomosing bundles (not less 

 complicated in the majority of petioles than in most reticulated 

 leaves) can be disentangled and resolved into separate indivi- 

 duals, and why the same independence and the same rank should 

 not be allowed to the parts of the vascular bundles. And how 

 shall we regard the lower plants, which have no fibres at all ? 

 If our conclusions are to be anything more than mere arbitrary 

 assumptions, we must go still farther; and we shall find no 

 halting- place till we reach the cell, the true seat of every reno- 

 vation in the plant, the starting-point of all non-sexual increase §, 



* Aristotle himself says that plants possess the power of reproducing 

 " stalk and root " in every one of their parts {TravraxTi yap e^" ''"' pt'fa" 

 Koi Kav\6v Bvva^iu. Vit. long, et brev. c. (i. p. 467). 



t Schidtz, Die Auaphytose (1848), and System der Morphologie (184/). 

 The passage quoted is taken from his later work, Verjiingung in Pflan- 

 zenreich (1851). The remark made above, when treating of the members 

 of the petiole, holds good here. The so-called anaphyta can by no means 

 grow into new plants themselves ; on the contrary, the new plant is pro- 

 duced as a germ, which is not identical with the anajjhytons. 



J Essais sur la Vegetation consideree dans le developpement des 

 bourgeons (1809), cf. e. (/. p. 174. " C'est done le bourgeon en qui reside 

 toute I'c'nergie vegetale ; aussi le rcgarde-t-on depuis longtemps comme un 

 individu .... D'apres les princij)es que j'ai develo})pes dans mes prece- 

 dens mcmoires, il faut aller plus loin, car je crois que chaque iibre vege- 

 tale est un individu, p\iis(|u'elle a eu soi, iudc'pcndatnment des auti'cs, les 

 moyens d'accroissement, de conservation et de reproduction." 



§ Earlier investigations into the origin of adventitious l)uds had made it 

 ])robable that, in its formation, each new shoot arises from a single cell. 

 The iirst convincing proof of this fact was given by llofmeister (Ver- 

 gleichende Untersuchung u. s. w. der Conifercn, p. 94), in Equisetum. The 

 ))ropagating cells on the foliage and edges of the leaves of Liverwort, w hich 



