SPECIAL FORMS. 51 



bases of former leaf-stalks, or marked by scars, left by their 

 fall. This name was used by botanists anterior to Linnaeus for 

 any tree-trunk, but is now used for the peculiar stems above- 

 mentioned ; also for the persistent base of a stem, otherwise 

 annual, which throws up fresh herbaceous stems or stalks from 

 year to year. Such short and enduring stems, being usually 

 near the ground or under it, were commonly mistaken for roots. 

 The old English name of Stock is sometimes used in botanical 

 description for all short and enduring stems of this sort, 

 whether rising somewhat above or concealed beneath the surface 

 of the soil. 



97. A Scape is a stem or branch which rises from beneath or 

 near the surface of the ground and bears flowers, but no proper 

 foliage. It therefore belongs to inflorescence. (265.) Scapes 

 usually spring from some one of the subterranean forms of stem. 



98. Of stems which do not stand upright in the air there are 

 various modifications and gradations. 



99. Scandent or Climbing Stems are those which rise by 

 attaching themselves to some extraneous support. This is 

 effected in various ways ; in some by the action of the stem 

 itself, in others by that of organs which it bears. 1 



100. Voluble or Twining Stems, or Twiners, are those which 

 ascend by coiling round a support, which must accordingly be 

 comparatively slender, or at least not too large. Some ascend 

 by coiling "with the sun" (that is, from right to left of the 

 observer viewing the coil from the outside 2 ) , as the Hop ; more, 



1 See Darwin, The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants, London 

 and New York, 1875. Also the earlier paper on the subject in Journal of 

 the Linnean Society, ix. 1865. 



Note that in North America climbing plants in general are in popular 

 language called Vines (e. g. Hop- Vine, Grape- Vine, Squash- Vine, &c.), a 

 name which properly belongs to Vitis only. 



2 Dextrorse and Sinistrorse, i. e. to the right or to the left, are almost indis- 

 pensable terms, but there is an ambiguity and discrepancy hi their use. 

 Darwin (in Climbing Plants, above referred to) seeks to avoid this by usually 

 employing the terms " with the sun," and " against the sun," phrases which 

 would be unmanageable in terminology. The writer (in Amer. Jour. Sci. 

 ser. 3, xiii. 391 ) suggested Eutropic for the former, Antitropic for the latter, 

 to be used in case it is preferred to evade rather than to encounter the 

 ambiguity. Probably the terms dextrorse and sinistrorse, or right and left, 

 will continue in use, as most natural and convenient. Now, in the first 

 place, it should be understood that a plant, or at least a plant's axis, having 

 no front and back, can have no right and left of its own. These relations 

 of direction must refer to the right and left of an observer. All depends, 

 accordingly, upon the position which the viewing observer is supposed to 

 occupy when he predicates the direction of the turns of a helix or of the over- 

 lapping of the parts of a bud. Linnaeus supposed the observer to view the 



