CHAPTER XIII. 
BRANCH VII. PHANEROGAMIA. 
THE FLOWERING PLANTS. 
443. In this great group we find the highest development 
of the plant-body, its tissues, and organs of reproduction. 
They are the most complex in structure, and most difficult 
to fully understand, of all the plants in the vegetable king- 
dom. 
444, The plant-body is composed of roots, stems, and 
leaves, generally well developed. Frequently these mem- 
bers 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. 
445. 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. 
446. The tissues are generally well developed in fiower- 
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, 
