122 FAMILIAR TREES 



there is a specimen twenty feet in height and 

 forming a tangle thirty feet through. The leaves 

 spring in " opposite " pairs from the nodes, 

 and are distinctly " compound," being made up of 

 from three to nine distinct stalked leaflets ; and 

 the white " sepals," or leaves of the calyx, do not 

 overlap in the flower-bud but merely meet so as to 

 touch, like the two halves of a swing-door, or are, 

 as it is technically termed, "valvate." 



Plants are, however, classified not by single 

 characters but by that tout ensemble which suggests 

 their real aflinities or relationships by descent from 

 a common ancestor ; and there are after all some 

 marked resemblances between Clematis and the rest 

 of the Ranunculacece. The juice is acrid ; the long 

 feathery " awns " or persistent styles, to which the 

 shrub owes its popular name of " Old Man's Beard," 

 are closely similar to those of some Anemones ; there 

 is the same indefinitely large number of stamens 

 and of carpels in the flower, and the same entire 

 absence of all fusion or union between the parts of 

 the flower, as in the rest of the Order. 



At the same time this recognition of the true test 

 of affinity in plants is one of the greatest achieve- 

 ments in the history of the science of botany, and 

 must always be honourably associated with the name 

 of Jussieu. Conrad Gesner, who died in 1565, had, 

 it is true, proposed that plants should be classified 

 according to their flowers and seeds; and his pupil 

 Csesalpinus, in 1583, carrying out this suggestion, 

 recognised several of our modern " Natural Orders " ; 

 as also did our English botanists Morison and Ray in 



