


KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 
POPULAR SCIENCE. 
—--— 
VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY.—No. IV. 
THE REPRODUCTION OF PLANTS. 
(Continued from Page 71.) 

WHEN WINTER’S KEEN FROSTS lay waste | 
the verdure lately spread out on bank and 
brae,—when the cold north wind robs the 
humbler inhabitants,—and when death seems 
to reign with an icy sceptre over all the vege- 
table kingdom,—we sigh for the green fields 
and pleasant lanes of summer, and ask, half 
doubtingly,—will next May have as many 
fiowers as last ? 
In such a mood, we sometimes go so far as 
to ask ourselves how it is that all this 
grandeur is, year after year, replenished. To 
answer such inquiries is the object of the 
present paper. 
It is well known that many plants,—and 
among them not a mean share of our choicest 
garden beauties,—are annual; that is, grow 
up, from few know where, in the spring; put 
out leaves and richly-colored flowers, during 
summer; and then with old autumn grow 
sallow, and gradually sicken and die,—to have 
their withered corpses covered in winter’s 
cold winding-sheet. These plants, then, last 
only for a year; and it consequently follows 
that they must be produced anew every 
Spring. Others have longer lives; some 
growing up one year with leaves in luxu- 
riance, and next year flowering to die with 
the season. Such are biennial. 
Trees and shrubs, however, as well as those 
plants which leave a living stem,—commonly 
ealled a root or bulb,—in the earth, over 
winter, live for a longer period of years, some 
even attaining the age of five thousand years. 
Yet all must die. Stout though the heart, 
and strong though the limb, they must yield 
to death’s greater power. It is self-evident, 
then, to the most careless reader, that unless 
there existed a means of reproducing indi- 
viduals, the earth would soon be without a 
floral population. This means is well known 
to exist in seeds. A few remarks on flowers, 
and the production and germination of seeds, 
will take up the bulk of our present commu- 
nication. 
Flowers, the crown of beauty on the fore- 
head of nature, are no exceptions to the Pla- 
tonian doctrine of “ wnity or identity, and 
variety.” Diverse in form and color as it is 
possible for objects to be, they have all one 
character,—they contain (or are the means 
employed for the formation of) the seed. Take 
a simple flower, as arose or the king-cup, and 
you find on the outside of the flower, five 
pointed, greenish segments, termed the calyx; 
and inside of these, in the former example, 
five pink-colored pieces, generally termed rose 


195 
leaves, and, in the latter case, five of a bright 
yellow hue. This inner whorl is called the 
corolla (the portions of it being the petals), 
and, with the calyx, it serves to shelter the 
organs within it. The forms assumed by 
these organs are at present immaterial; their 
existence under any shape whatever, is all 
with which we have to do. ‘The separate 
segments may be united in a bell, or cup, as 
; . -. | in the Canterbury-bell and primrose, or the 
green trees of foliage, and the wood of its | if ¥ I 
calyx and corolla may be of one color and 
inseparable, as in the lily and tulip; or both 
may be wanting, as in the pines and wake- 
robin. . 
Internal to these coverings, exist a series 
of little organs, which, owing to their being 
conspicuous in such plants, had better be ex- 
amined first in the rose or king-cup already 
referred to. But do not look for them in 
double flowers,—those lovely monsters. In 
the double flower, a number of these very 
organs have been transformed into petals; and 
in perfect flowers of this kind, not a vestige 
of one is to be seen in its natural shape. 
Roses, then, with more than five colored por- 
tions, or petals, are monsters! Inside then 
of the corolla is noticeable a cluster of yellow 
thread-like bodies, bearing on their superior 
extremities little thickened masses, which are 
boxes containing a powdery matter. These 
are the stamens, and vary in number in differ- 
ent plants, from one to upwards of a hundred. 
Linneus founded the classes of his arrange- 
ment on the number of these organs; a sys- 
tem of classification now totally rejected, on 
account of its artificial nature. 
In the very centre of the flower, other or- 
gans exist, resembling the stamens, but with- 
out the box at the summit, and either ending 
in a pointed extremity, or in a thickened and 
viscous mass. These interior portions are 
called pistils, and may either be solitary, or in 
considerable numbers. In the rose we finda 
whole cluster of them, and in the lily only 
one. The orders of the Linnean system are 
derived from these internal organs. The 
stamens, then, and the pistils, or central 
organs, are the ouly portions concerned in 
the production of the seed. The process is, 
as nearly as may he, this :— 
The powder in the stamens, after being 
ripened, falls on the viscous point or summit 
of the pistil. There, through the action of 
certain vital laws, it bursts its outer coat, 
sends a long tube down the stalk of the pistil 
—called the style—into the thickened cavity 
at its base, where it joins the young seeds, or 
ovales, and there, under the influence of vital 
laws, assists in the perfection of the already 
partially-formed seed. The box, or cavity, 
at the base of the pistil, is called the ovary ; 
and, in the perfected state, becomes the seed- 
vessel. The fruit or seed-vessel is of various 
forms ; indeed, so Protean in character is this 

