74 



THE GENERAL MORPHOLOGY OF THE PLANT. 



float in water, in which a few of the coarser Sea-weeds do indeed 

 attain a prodigious length and bulk. The lowest forms of Vascular 

 plants, such as the Club-Mosses (Fig. 89), are of humble size, as 

 the name indicates, although the stems are often of a woody tex- 

 ture. Most Ferns, or Brakes, are also herbaceous, or their persist- 

 ent and more or less woody stems remain underground, in the form 

 of rootstocks, or creep on its surface (as in Fig. 95). A few of 

 them, however, in the warmer parts of the world, rise into trunks, 



and form palm-like trees (Fig. 94), 

 of graceful port, and sometimes of 

 great altitude. Thus far, the roots 

 are still of a secondary character ; 

 that is, they spring from the stem, 

 wherever it is in contact with or 

 covered by the soil. From the 

 mode of development it will here- 

 after appear that Ferns and Club- 

 Mosses, like true Mosses, can have 

 no primary root. The axis, there- 

 fore, grows from the apex only, 

 and it has no provision for increase 

 in diameter as it increases in age. 

 They have accordingly received 

 the name of ACROGENS or ACROGE- 

 NOUS PLANTS, terms of Greek 

 derivation, signifying that they 

 grow from the apex alone. As to 

 their fructification, all these fam- 

 ilies belong to the great lower series of 



109. Cryptogamous or Flowerless Plants, Such are all plants 

 which are reproduced by spores in place of seeds. Spores, as has 

 been already shown, are single specialized cells, which originate 

 in some one of the ordinary modes of cell-production, and with- 

 out the agency of proper flowers. Cryptogamous and Flowerless 

 are therefore equivalent terms; the former denoting, metaphori- 

 cally, that the flowers are concealed or obscure. The great 



FIG. 89. Lycopodium Carolinianum, of the natural size. 90. A leaf from the spike of fruc- 

 tification, with the spore-case in its axil, and spores falling out. 91, A group of four scores, 

 magnified. 92. The same separated, 93. A burst spore-case of Selaginella apus, with its four 

 large spores. 



