188 The Vegetable Individual in its relation to Species. 
which are proved to be unessential by the plant’s losing no essen- 
tial function when deprived of them. For even when the plant 
does not produce them, it can fully pein memo the object of its 
individual life ; it can produce flowers and fruit. A glance at the 
examples just now adduced, Nigella, Puvase: Rheas, Adonis, 
etc., will make these statements obvious. ‘The branches of these 
plants, each of which, like the stem, is crowned with flowers and 
fruit, are evidently only — repetitions of the simple 
plant, absolutely identica the main stem, and hence to be 
ranked as equal to it in ari nastons i €., equally to be viewed as 
particular individuals, and with as much reason as in Zoology we 
concede individuality to the branches of the coral-stock (polypi- 
dom), which are now universally acknowledged to be individuals, 
and which offer an analogy of decisive importance for ascertaining 
the nature of the branch in vegetables. In view of this analogy 
Dee Deepa plants as aggregations of individuals. 
ow turn back, and apply what has been shown to be 
the case ine ssa annual herb to the shrub and the tree, each of 
whose annual generations now appears more distinctly than before 
to be, in their peculiar connexion, not one individual, but a world 
of individuals developing in the same period of vegetation and 
upon the same stem. ‘T’o this intent many of the early botanists 
have expressed themselves, as I stated in the Introduction. Thus, 
B. e. g., Says of branches, that they shoot forth from the 
stem ‘as if they were so many plants rooted in it ;’’+ and Goethe :f 
“lateral branches may be regarded as particular ne which 
are rooted upon the maternal stem, just as this stem is upon the 
earth.” Among moderns, Unger, at the Close of his investigations 
into dicotyledonous stems, sa . . Buds and the brane 
ays 
they develop are individual plants, which live by preying saci 
the maternal stem.”$ Similar expressions are used by Schlei- 
h. d. Akad, 1835, p.247. .... “ Hen a polyp-stoc is a mass of ani- 
sale We have no sntietans ory comprehensive expression for our idea of a are 
What an individual is remains — peters Sty hem are erent agEres 
oF > eplriemd which may be compared w pabetoskn The of ena 
y des ey by. Birenberg i = the Abhandl, for 1832, ‘ens i 
Fag folowing emark “ The cora structure i .  saaaie a mere structure compos 
f 
many heads, or with s e fur cations 3, ae Cavin maintained ; cts stem 
with animal flowers, a x £m e vst it: s a body of families, a living tree 
of consanguinity, the single animals t longing 23 it and tal devel Pine cha 
the omplete 
vd, | 
t Versuch d. ae d, Fz zu erkldren, p- 59. The words “just as” in the passage 
quoted imply too much, and remind us of Du Petit-Thouars’ unfounded doctrine 
== the area ieR of f the woody prema of the stem by the ‘roots’ of the buds whicli 
ae Ueber “4 Bau u. — des Dicotyledonenstammes, p, 177. Here, too, 
“preying” is too strong a 
