OF TENNESSEE. 49 



CHAPTER V* 



SHORT REVIEW OP THE LIFE-HISTORY OF PLANTS, 

 AND THEIR CLASSIFICATION, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE 

 TO GRASSES AND FORAGE HERBS— CONTRIBUTED BY DR. 

 GATTINGER. 



Plants are living organic beings, deriving their origin 

 unconditionally from other like beings (parentage), as de- 

 tached particles of the same by fission, budding, or seed 

 production, which, under the influence of light, heat and 

 moisture, possess the faculty of growing and developing 

 into bodies exactly like those from which they have been 

 first detached. This growth they accomplish by attracting 

 and taking within themselves simple elements or inorganic 

 compounds from their surroundings, which, by their poWer 

 of assimilation they convert into organic compounds or tis- 

 sues like their own. At a certain period of their growth 

 and development they become able to reproduce themselves, 

 which is called their state of maturity, after which their 

 cycles of life are either closed, and the parental plant 

 decays — annual plants, or they repeat indefinitely that pro- 

 cess of reproduction and individual growth — perennials. 



This simple sketch of vegetable life is within the univer- 

 sal assemblage of individual plants, which we call the vege- 

 table kingdom, carried out under a wonderful variety of 

 forms and methods. The human intellect, in its endeavor 

 to understand the meaning of this untold number of forms, 

 has, since the dawn of civilization, attempted to- group the 

 like and the unlike until it in recent days succeeded in 

 establishing a rational system of classification. 



For this purpose it has been agreed upon, that the aggre- 

 4 



