22 THE LIFE OF THE PLANT 



In the flowers where carpels have changed into green 

 leaves we notice small green leaflets or whole leaf-buds 

 on their edges at places where we should expect ovules. 

 Therefore ovules and parts of ovules are nothing but 

 leaflets or parts of leaflets. Thus we conclude that all 

 the parts of a flower are nothing but modified leaves, 

 and the whole flower is nothing but a transformed 

 leaf-bud. This opinion is supported by the not un- 

 common cases of flowers from the centres of which 

 grow shoots covered with leaves. Such twigs have 

 also been known to grow out of the cavity of the 

 ovary ; when cut off and planted they have occasionally 

 taken root. 



But what becomes of the ovule — not the abnormal 

 one, which grows into a green leaf, but the ordinary, 

 normal one ? After a plant has flowered and the 

 petals have fallen off, after the stamens have died and 

 the ovary has changed into the fruit, the ovules will 

 become transformed into seeds, containing the embryos 

 of new plants. Here evidently our description of the 

 external features of a plant ends. I have unrolled before 

 you the whole picture of the outward manifestations of 

 the life of the plant. We started with the seed and we 

 have returned to it, and have thus completed the full 

 cycle of a plant's life. This cycle will be followed by 

 another, and so on through the infinite succession of 

 generations. I have tried to enliven the tedium of this 

 enumeration of organs, which is indispensable for my 

 subsequent exposition, by linking them together by the 

 one leading idea of transformation or the metamorphosis 

 of organs, an idea for which science is mainly indebted 

 to the scientist and poet Goethe. Examined from this 

 point of view the life of a plant is like a phantasmagoria, 

 a successive series of changing magic-lantern pictures. 

 An organ has only time to assume before you a definite 

 shape, when it already loses its configuration, becomes 

 unrecognisable, changes into something indefinite, and 



