GLIMPSES INTO PLANT STRUCTURE 41 



find that at some little distance behind the grow- 

 ing-point the cells have lost their globular and 

 oval shapes, and are long and thin. This elonga- 

 tion goes on with time, and the connections or 

 division walls which separate adjoining cells dis- 

 appear, until at last, instead of a network of 

 ordinary cells, we have a series of bundles of 

 long tubes, or "vessels," as botanists call them. 

 Part of such a band of tissue is shown in section 

 at Fig. 26. These tubes, uniting with each other, 

 form the tough fibres that permeate all the prin- 

 cipal tissues of higher plants, and in a section of 

 the Sarsaparilla plant-stem (Fig. 27), these "fibro- 

 vascular" bundles once more borrowing the weird 

 phraseology of the botanist may be seen scattered 

 in amongst the pith or cellular structure. 



These scattered bundles characterise the struc- 

 ture of plant-stems in one of the great divisions 

 of the vegetable kingdom, known as the " mono- 

 cotyledons," which means that seeds, when sprout- 

 ing, send up a single blade, like a grain of corn, a 

 date stone, or a lily seed. Such plants generally 

 bear leaves with parallel veins, and have their 

 flowers arranged in whorls of three. 



These features are in contradistinction to the 

 structure and arrangement of the " dicotyledons," 

 to which belong almost all our common field 

 plants, except grasses, and nearly all our native 



