OF BUDS. 51 
in growth until it becomes an organ concurrent with the others in 
the life of the plant. 
The bud may therefore be considered as a fundamental element 
in the plant, which, without it, would soon perish. It is the bud 
which year by year repairs the losses, supplies the flowers, the 
leaves, the branches which have disappeared. Through its means 
the plant increases in growth. Through it, its existence is pro- 
longed. The bud is the true renovator of the vegetable world. It 
may be said, in fact, that a plant is all bud; there is scarcely any 
part that does not produce them; the roots, the leaves, the flowers 
even, may accidentally give birth to buds, for nature never loses 
sight of the phenomena essential to organic life—namely, the 
production of new beings. 
Buds are of two kinds, namely, buds which produce leaves and 
branches, and buds which contain at once leaves and flowers. 
The leaf bud is a scaly coneform organ placed on the axis of a leaf 
—in fact, a rudimentary leaf or branch, so to speak, formed as the 
growing season is about to close: it is, therefore, rather the 
cradle in which the leaf is to be nursed in the coming spring, than 
the parts of the leaf itself in a rudimentary condition. The 
growing point is composed of cellular tissue possessing special 
powers of vitality and growth, and in direct communication with 
the horizontal system of the pith of the stem. 
The arrangements of the scales of buds are very various: the 
scales being rudimentary leaves, the arrangements of scales are 
also the arrangements of leaves. Some of their forms are familiar 
to us. There are no vascular structures within the point of the 
bud itself, but spiral vessels and woody fibre approach near to the 
base of the cone. 
The flower-bud, on the other hand, is a stationary growing focus 
surrounded by rudimentary leaves, the growing point of which 
has become quasi-paralysed, and has no power of elongating 
itself; it is, in short, a stunted branch, from which the power of 
elongating itself by growth has been withdrawn, for it is well 
known that a stagnation of the juices is favourable to the produc- 
tion of flower-buds. 
It is then necessary to avoid confounding tle leaf-bud with 
the flower-buds, which contain only the flower ready to burst, to 
E 2 
