CHAPTEE XII. 



BRANCH VI. ANTHOPHYTA (Spermatopliyta, Phanerogamia). 

 THE FLOWBEING PLANTS. 



437. Ill this great group we find the highest develop- 

 ment of the plant-body, its tissues, and organs of repro- 

 duction. They are the most complex in structure, and 

 the most difficult to fully understand, of all the plants in 

 the vegetable kingdom. 



438. The plant-body of the sporophore is composed of 

 roots, stems, and leaves, generally well developed. Fre- 

 quently these members of the plant-body are more or less 

 branched, giving rise to extensive branching root-systems, 

 branching stems, and branching leaves. Hairs (trichomes) 

 of various forms may occur upon all parts of the plant. 



439. By far the greater number of flowering plants are 

 chlorophyll-bearing, comparatively few only being para- 

 sitic or saprophytic. They range from minute plants one 

 or two centimetres in height, and living but a few days or 

 weeks, to enormous trees, which continue to grow for many 

 hundred years, and attain a height of a hundred metres or 

 more. 



440. The tissues are generally well developed in flower- 

 ing plants. The epidermis, which is copiously supplied with 

 breathing-pores, consists of one or (rarely) more layers of 

 cells, whose external walls are generally somewhat thick- 

 ened, and whose cell-contents rarely contain chlorophyll. 



236 



