394 



PHYSIOLOGY 



Phloem strands. The phloem strands are usually definitely related 

 to the xylem strands (which carry water), though they occur also inde- 

 pendent of them. In most seed plants there is a phloem strand lying 

 along the outer face of a xylem strand, and except in the monocotyledons 

 there is generally between them a meristem (cambium), which may add 

 to the radial diameter of both xylem and phloem. It may also, if it 

 extend from one strand to another around the axis, produce new second- 

 ary phloem strands between the old ones. The phloem strands form 

 a continuous system, and may be traced from the stem outward into the 

 leaves and downward into the roots. So followed, they usually dis- 

 appear before the xylem strands end ; that is, their differentiation does 

 not begin so early in the rootlets nor extend so far in the leaves. 



'Elements of phloem. The elements of the phloem strands are sieve 

 tubes, companion cells, cambiform cells, and parenchyma, with some- 

 times mechanical tissues, though the latter belong more commonly to 

 the adjacent tissue systems. It is impossible to specify the precise 

 role of each of the elements; but among them all the sieve tubes may 

 be considered the chief lines of conduction, the others being supplemen- 

 tary thereto. 1 In a way the sieve* tubes are analogous to the tracheae of 

 the xylem; particularly in that, having their end walls partially resorbed, 

 they constitute tubes through which the foods may move without the 

 delay necessitated by osmotic transfer from cell to cell. 



Evidence of conductivity. The reasons for assigning conductive 

 functions to the phloem strands are chiefly these: (i) The pith is so 

 commonly dead and its cells filled with gases that it may be excluded from 

 consideration. (2) The cortex, too, is often dead; particularly is this 

 almost universally true of the older parts of shrubs and trees in which 

 it is frequently sloughed off after a few years; yet there is an active trans- 

 fer of foods. Moreover, the movement of food through the protoplasmic 

 membranes of live cells is apparently too slow to meet the needs of plant 

 growth. (3) When the cortex is removed by surgical operation, the 

 supply of food seems to be quite adequate to permit development ; but 

 if the phloem strands are interrupted, transfer of foods is almost or quite 

 stopped. 



This is particularly noticeable when girdling occurs in nature, as when birds 

 destroy a zone of bark in conifers whose wood remains able to conduct water. 

 The tops and roots (if one or more circles of branches below the injury remain, 



1 It is as though the sieve tubes were the main railway lines and the adjacent tissue 

 sidetracks temporarily occupied. 



