Xll INTRODUCTION. 



avoid that prolixity of detail and overloading with technical terms which tends 

 rather to confusion than clearness. In this he will be more or less successful. 

 The aptness of a botanical description, like the beauty of a work of imagination, 

 will always vary with the style and genius of the author. 



§ 1. The Plant in General. 



6. The Plant, in its botanical sense, includes every being which has vege- 

 table life, from the loftiest tree which adorns our landscapes, to the humblest 

 moss which grows on its stem, to the mould or fungus which attacks our pro- 

 visions, or the green scum that floats on our ponds. 



7. Every portion of a plant which has a distinct part or function to perform 

 in the operations or phenomena of vegetable life is called an Organ. 



8. What constitutes vegetable life, and what are the functions of each organ, 

 belong to Vegetable Physiology ; the microscopical structure of the tissues 

 composing the organs, to Vegetable Anatomy ; the composition of the substances 

 of which they are formed, to Vegetable Chemistry ; under Descriptive and Sys- 

 tematic Botany we have chiefly to consider the forms of organs, that is, their 

 Morphology, in the proper sense of the term, and their general structure so far 

 as it affects classification and specific resemblances and differences. The terms 

 we shall now define belong chiefly to the latter branch of Botany, as being 

 that which is essential for the investigation of the Flora of a country. We 

 shall add, however, a short chapter on Vegetable Anatomy and Physiology, as 

 a general knowledge of both imparts an additional interest to and facilitates the 

 comparison of the characters and affinities of the plants examined. 



9. In the more perfect plants, their organs are comprised in the general 

 terms Root, Stem, Leaves, Flowers, and Fruit. Of these the three first, 

 whose function is to assist in the growth of the plant, are Organs of Vegetation ; 

 the flower and fruit,, whose office is the formation of the seed, are the Organs of 

 Reproduction. 



10. All these organs exist, in one shape or another, at some period of the 

 life of most, if not all, flowering plants, technically called phcenogamous or pha- 

 nerogamous plants ; which all bear some kind of flower and fruit in the bota- 

 nical sense of the term. In the lower classes, the ferns, mosses, fungi, moulds 

 or mildews, seaweeds, etc., called by botanists cryptogamous plants, the flowers, 

 the fruit, and not unfrequently one or more of the organs of vegetation, are 

 either wanting, or replaced by organs so different as to be hardly capable of 

 bearing the same name. 



11. The observations comprised in the following pages refer exclusively to 

 the flowering or phsenogamous plants. The study of the cryptogamous classes 

 has now become so complicated as to form almost a separate science. They are 

 therefore not included in these introductory observations, nor, with the excep- 

 tion of ferns, in the present Flora. 



12. Plants are 



Monocarpic, if they die after one flowering- season. These include An- 

 nuals, which flower in the same year in which they are raised from seed ; and 

 Biennials, which only flower in the year following that in which they are 

 sown. 



Caulocarpic, if, after flowering, the whole or part of the plant lives through 

 the winter and produces fresh flowers another season. These include Her- 

 baceous perennials, in which the greater part of the plant dies after flowering, 

 leaving only a small perennial portion called the Stock or Caudex, close to or 

 within the earth ; Under shrubs, suffruticose or suffrutescent plants, in which 

 the flowering branches, forming a considerable portion of the plant, die down 

 after flowering, but leave a more or less prominent perennial and woody base ; 

 Shrubs (frutescent or fruticose plants), in which the perennial woody part 



