CHAPTER VIII 



SPRING AND ITS STUDIES; GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 

 AND WORLD-LANDSCAPES; SEEDLING AND BUD 



Spring Studies Mode of Study in Botany Phenology and Dis- 

 tribution Aspects of Nature, Vegetation and Landscapes of 

 the World Germination Buds and Bud- Scales Arrange- 

 ment of Leaves in the Bud. 



THE study of plants is naturally begun in spring. It is, 

 indeed, the supreme advantage of a temperate climate, one 

 which richly compensates in beauty and even in interest 

 for a verdure less exuberant, a variety less Protean than 

 that of the tropical forest, that the procession of the seasons 

 is ever before us. Life is, indeed, universally rhythmic, in 

 animal as in plant ; but the plant is more passive and 

 plastic to its conditions, more under the sway of environ- 

 mental change, and hence this seasonal change of plant 

 life becomes the more impressive spectacle of living nature. 

 See the tide of life set in with a flood in spring, filling every 

 corner of the earth with sprouting seeds and shooting stems, 

 and crowding, spreading, rippling leaves ; how as the russet 

 underwood warms to the fuller sun through trees still bare, 

 it glows with bright golden patches of lesser celandine ; 

 how its dead leaves silently sink under a restless foam- 

 tipped sea of green anemone ; how every mossy bank is 



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