The Vegetable Individual in its relation to Species. 187 
At first sight the case seems to be different in re haplobiotic* 
plants, which terminate their existence at the end of the simple 
process of development, with the formation of flowers and fruit ; 
and this they do whether they exist one year, as Adonis astivalis 
and ante Nigella, Papaver Rheas, Hrigeron Canadensis,t+ 
or for two as Oenothera and Verbascu cum, or for many years,{ 
as Agave Knsty: plant], the East Indian Corypha, and the Mex- 
ican Fourcroya,$ which suddenly puts forth its flowers only after 
400 years of extremely slow growth, and ends its life with the 
formation of its first and long-deferred fruit. The development of 
these plants, when compared with that of the first mentioned ana- 
biotic plants, seems at first to comprise only one generation, and to 
depend upon the development of one individual. But here, too, a 
closer examination shows conditions incompatible with the nature 
of the simple plant (the individual). One constituent element in 
sents a multitude of parts which bear no essential relation to the 
whole plant. This is true of a large part of the ramifications, of 
branches which may exist in one case and not in others, and 
* De Candolle calls geet: gidtog pein” and haplobiotic te mono- 
carpic, terms which are om their ambiguity. With an ually in 
propriate choice of terms ce “fivides the first ; (Phys. Veg. I, p "13), mg ous. 
earpie and rhizoearpic, according as the ati hich produces the fruit is perma- 
ies off down 
wths; for 
he mere re -allone, but by a portion of the stem. is one of the 
ost rema —- a wan ¥ hon hialegiael ideas has engendered, 
that De Candelle should have regarded th pape aye: and most natural circumstance 
in the ride life,—its death after gt ving attainol the goal of its development,—as an 
n a 
t 
ness of the flowers and seeds. Réper, however, in a note s translation of the 
above work , justly remarks that there are shtruals with double eas which die off to 
the ground although t °y produce no seeds. ht may convince ourselves selene a 
doubt that the flowers, on the c ontrary, are much less rapacious than the la 
parts of the plant, that they even shut the sho th off from the afflux of too 
t; for many plants develop vegetative branches close under devies 
Ower, as e.g, Stellaria media, Datura, ral ete. In such cases the _ flower- 
stalk, which cuts itself off from almost all far + afta of nourishment, remains 
der, while the portions of the goed - rotiaee Veneath and the branches which spring 
from it, gorged with succulent r, enlarge more and more, and attain a most 
Size. 
on 
satay are plan 
nnue Honates So, too, many vernal plants, as Paige Oardamine hir- 
Sita, Spergula Morisonii, oe Be weeds of Fees inter corn, e. g., several species 
ares, Bromus j 
Corypha umbraculi roy i: Rhea Hort. Mal. iii, pl. 1-12. This is also the 
Fo : in hog = ic Metrorylon and Eugeissona, according to Martius (Hist. 
m, 
p. 1 : 
me, On Pease longeva, cf. Zuccarini in the Nov. act. nat. cur., xvi, 2, p. 666 and 
