INTRODUCTORY LESSONS 
IN 
STRUCTURAL BOTANY. 
SECTION 1.—THE BEGINNINGS OF PLANT LIFE. 
1. If the first rain of the wet season is followed by warm, sunny 
weather, specks of green will soon appear among the dry stems of last 
year’s weeds; and in fence corners or other eddy nooks where summer 
winds have drifted seeds and covered them with dust, you may find per- 
fect mats of baby plants. With a shovel skim off a few square inches of 
this plant-bearing soil, and carefully examine it. Hixcept a few green 
needles, which you recognize as spears of grass, most of these little plants 
seein to consist of white stems, which split at the top into pairs of green 
leaves. Looking sharply, you may find between each pair of leaves a 
1. Seed of Bur-clover just be- 
fore it appears above ground. 2. 
Same three days older. 3. Mus- 
tard. 4. Bur clover showing the 
first and second plumule leaves; 
the furmer simple (apparently), 
the latter with three leaflets. 5 
Mallows (Malva borealis), show- 
ing the long-petioled see lleaves 
‘Cotyledons!, and one plumule 
leat unfolded. 6. Filaria (Ero- 
dium), with Jobed or sub-com- 
pound seed leaves. 1 2 3 4 5 6 
tiny bud; or, in the older plants, this may have grown other leaves, which 
curiously enough are not like the first two. (Figures 1 to 6). Searching 
throuch thé shovelful of earth you will likely find plants in all stages of 
growth, from swollen and sprouting seeds to stems, which are just push- 
ing their bowed leaf-heads into the sunlight. Here, then, is material 
from which you may learn how plants grow; a lesson, remember, which 
no text-book or schoolmaster can teach you. It will be easier, however, 
since most of these early wild plants come from very small seeds, to take 
