CHAPTER XIX 

 THE CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTS 1 



249. Natural Groups of Plants. One does not need to 

 be a botanist in order to recognize the fact that plants 

 naturally fall into groups which resemble each other pretty 

 closely, that these groups may be combined into larger 

 ones the members of which are somewhat alike, and so on. 

 For example, all the bulb-forming spring buttercups 2 which 

 grow in a particular field may be so much alike in leaf, 

 flower, and fruit that the differences are hardly worth 

 mentioning. The tall summer buttercups 3 resemble each 

 other closely, but are decidedly different from the bulbous 

 spring-flowering kind, and yet are enough like the latter 

 to be ranked with them as buttercups. The yellow 

 water-buttercups 4 resemble in their flowers the two 

 kinds above mentioned, but differ from them greatly in 

 habit of growth and in foliage, while still another, a 

 very small-flowered kind, 5 might fail to be recognized 

 as a buttercup at all. 



The marsh marigold, the hepatica, the rue anemone, 

 and the anemone all have a family resemblance to butter- 

 cups, 6 and the various anemones by themselves form 

 another group like that of the buttercups. 



1 See Warming and Potter's Systematic Botany, Strasburger, Noll, Schenk, 

 and Schimper's Text-Book of Botany, Part II, or Kerner and Oliver, Vol. II, 

 pp. 616-790. 2 R. bulbosus. 3 R. acris. 4 R. multifidus. 5 R. abortive, 



6 Fresh specimens or herbarium specimens will show this. 



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