RESERVOIRS OF RESERVE-MATERIALS. 



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organs of the most various kind may be employed as reservoirs of reserve-materials. 

 In the so-called evergreen plants, even the green leaves serve during the winter 

 as accessory organs for the storage of the products of assimilation; and in the 

 Algae it is a very common phenomenon that cells abounding in chlorophyll become 

 densely filled with reserve-materials at the conclusion of the period of vegetation. 

 What has here been shortly said is only to serve generally as indicating the most 

 important points, since the vegetable world is simply inexhaustible in the variety of 

 phenomena of organisation connected with the storage of reserve-materials, and their 



ii ^ii 



I'IG. 227.— Subterranean parts of a flowering plant of ColcJticum autumnale. A external view from the front, k the corni ; s' and s" 

 scale leaves enveloping the flower-stalk ; luh base, from which the roots (lu) spring. B longitudinal section of the preceding (plane of 

 section perpendicular to the paper), hh a brown membrane enveloping all the subterranean parts of the plant ; st the stalk which bore 

 flowers and foliage during the previous year — it is dead, and only its basal portion, k, swollen into a conn still exists as a reservoir of 

 reserve-materials for the Jiew plant now in process of flowering. This flowering plant is a lateral shoot from the base of the corm k ; 

 it consists of the axis, from the base of which spring the roots W and the middle portion of which k' swells into the corm for next year, 

 the old corm it disappearing in the meanwhile. The axis supports the sheathing leaves s s' s", and the foliage-leaves /' /" ; in the axils 

 of the uppermost foliage-leaves are the flowers * *', between which appears the free apex of the axis itself. The foliage-leaves are still 

 small at the time of flowering ; they, together with the fruits, protrude above the surface of the earth during the following spring. 

 The portion of the axis i' then swells up into a new corm, on which the axillary bud ü" developes into a new flowering axis, while the 

 sheath of the lowermost foliage leaf becomes converted into the enveloping brown membrane. 



subsequent employment. Even Fungi, the nutrition of which we shall take more 

 closely into consideration later on, occasionally form reservoirs of reserve-materials — 

 so-called sclerotia. The entire mode of life of a plant is connected most intimately 

 with the ways and means of employing the persistent organs as reservoirs of reserve- 



