MONOCOTYLEDONS MAIZE 61 



cut through the fibre with a saw, and remove it, the roots 

 will then be seen to spring from the same bulbous shoot,. 

 outside the seed, as the leaves do ; and if the shell 

 be broken open there will be found inside a yellow 

 very soft and spongy globular body which almost 

 completely fills the seed, and is connected to the young 

 plant through a small hole in the hard shell. 



This is the cotyledon. It is not much like the 

 other cotyledons we have studied, still less is it like 

 a leaf. But by tracing in this way the various forms 

 the cotyledon takes in monocotyledons, we see that 

 this certainly corresponds with the leaf-like cotyledon- 

 of the onion, and is therefore morphologically a leaf. 



9. Now look at the Maize seedlings. There is 

 first a short tube or sheath which may be only half 

 an inch long. From inside it comes one a little longer, 

 then a narrow green leaf, at first tightly rolled up inside. 

 Pulling a plant up we find it still attached to the grain 

 and closely to it, very much as the Pea plant is at- 

 tached to its seed. 



From just above the grain, two, afterwards more, 

 roots shoot out and unlike the first one and the single 

 strongly growing vertical root of such a plant as the 

 Pea, spread out more or less horizontally, and if the 

 grains have not been buried deep enough, and the 

 pot has been kept damp, may even lie exposed on 

 the surface of the soil, and show very clearly the 

 thick covering of root-hairs. 



Break open the grain ; the greater part of it is- 

 now watery and rotten, but there is a firm white 

 swollen body directly connected with the plant. This 

 body has been called the scutellum and in grains, 



