68 COMPOUND ORGANS OF PLANTS. 



plan of the next year's growth, the nodes and even the leaves 

 of the future stem. On the approach of winter the vegetable 

 machinery stops, but there is no disarrangement of its parts, 

 on the contrary, all is ready in the bud, and awaiting the 

 stimulus of the returning light and heat. 



The young leaves are beautifully folded together in the bud 

 in such a manner as to occupy the least possible space, the 

 peculiar mode varying in different plants. The arrangement of 

 the leaves in the bud is termed their vernation or pr«foliation. 

 Any one can examine it in the spring with the certainty of 

 being very much interested, by cutting across the leaf-buds 

 with a sharp knife, when they are swelling and before they 

 have begun to expand. 



On the approach of spring, the leaf buds throw off their 

 scales, and the leaves which were at first all crowded and 

 closely packed together in the bud, become separated from 

 each other by the elongation of their axis of growth, or the 

 formation of internodes or naked intervals of stem between 

 them, much after the mode in which the joints of a pocket 

 telescope are drawn out one after the other; whilst, at the 

 base, or in the axilla of every leaf-stalk, is seen to form, as the 

 season advances, buds capable in their turn of being developed 

 into branches, or a provision for the growth of the ensuing 

 season. 



Now it is the growth of the terminal bud which produces 

 the elongation of the stem, whilst the development of the 

 axillary buds produces the branches ; and as the arrangement 

 of axillary buds depends on that of the leaves, in the axils of 

 which they grow, and as the bud is the germ of the future 

 branch, it is evident that the development of the branches, 

 together with all their subsequent ramifications, must follow 



