PROCEEDINGS OP THE HORTICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 647 



the first order of plants; for aii}' toad-stool or mushroom shows us a plant 

 both llowerlcss and without distinguishable leaves and stem. Pluck, 

 moreover, a leaf of fern of any kind, and, instead of flowers or seeds, you 

 will note on the back of the leaf little elevations that look like barnacles, 

 and from these come the spores that propagate the plant. Thus you have 

 the two classes of tlowerless plants. 



I am willing to be laughed at for quaintly simplifying the second and 

 principal order of plants, the sexual or flowering; and once amused an in- 

 telligent and good-natured audience by producing a cornstalk and a stick 

 of sassafras as specimens of the two orders of the second of th^ two great 

 divisions. All the plants that are' most important to us are either of the 

 cornstalk or the sassafras family. Perhaps it is best, however, to take a 

 more familiar specimen than the sassafras, and we will hold up the corn, 

 stalk and the maple branch before our readers as specimens. The corn- 

 stalk is a somewhat homely creature, but has the most distinguished rela- 

 tives, and is of the family of the grasses, lilies and palms. All our cereals 

 are of this familj', and without its help man and beast must come near 

 ctarving. The characteristic marks are obvious. The cornstalk grows 

 from within and is endogenous, and, moreover, the germ is fed from only a 

 single cotyledon or seed-lobe. In this, as in other plants of its class, there 

 is no clear distinction between the wood and the bark. 



Pass to the other or exogenous class of the same grand division of flower- 

 ing plants, and we have, as in the maple and all our forest trees, and most 

 of our fruits and flowers, the constant mark of the formation of the wood 

 from without inward, so as to record each successive season of growth in 

 the rings of the trunk or branch beneath the bark which is distinct from 

 the wood. The germ, moreover, in growing is nourished by two seed-lobes 

 instead of one. It is interesting and instructive to carry these simple 

 principles in our mind as we ramble through our groves, and orchards, and 

 garden, with pruning-knife and microscope in hand. We soon find our- 

 selves becoming tolerable botanists without crazing our heads with a cata- 

 logue of outlandish names. We can train even our little children to read 

 this grand yet obvious alphabet of nature, and tell whether a plant belongs 

 to the flowering or flowerless division; whether to the famil}' of toad-stools, 

 mosses and ferns, or to the family of grasses and trees ; and to decide to 

 wiiioh branch of this last great family it belongs — whether to the grass 

 and cornstalk tribe, or to the tribe of maples and roses. When we have 

 found the place of a plant in the grand division, and its general class, it is 

 interesting to hunt up its especial order and tribe, and sa}^ exactly what it 

 is in common phrase. Here, for example, we have a clump of oaks of 

 various kinds, big and little, that have colonized that corner of our ground; 

 cut off a branch or twig from each ; ascertain by the wood that it belongs 

 to the grand division of flowering plants, and to the first class exogenous 

 and dicotyledonous, and then trace it out to the second subdivision of 

 plants without corolla, and to its order, according to Loudon, among the 

 urticepi with ro\igh points or stinging hairs, and see its odd aflinity with 

 the nettle that gives the order the name; or, as other botanists have it, we 

 may rank it with the cupuliferce or cup-bearing trees among the chestnuts 

 and beeches and hizels. Thus we have fixed the place of the oah accord- 



