GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS OF PLANT LIFE. 



" Science is a bright light that illuminates the gardener's path towards success ; but the pathway itself is good 

 practice after all." 



TT is about a hundred years ago since Goethe,* the great German poet, who was very 



fond of plants, pointed out the important central fact that all the parts or organs 

 of what we usually speak of as flowers, or blossom, or bloom, are really and simply 

 mere phases or modifications of ordinary green leaves. In a word, there are green 

 leaves for workaday purposes, and coloured or otherwise specialised floral leaves as 

 if for high-days and holidays, but really for vital functional objects, as will be shown. 



Mr. Euskin, in Letter V. of his "Fors Clavigera," in alluding to Goethe's work, says 

 that the discovery was "a true and a notable one, for as a matter of fact, you will find 

 that all plants whatever are composed essentially of two parts, viz.^ the leaf and the 

 root ; the leaf loving light, and the root loving darkness; the one liking to be 

 clean, the other dirty ; one liking to grow, for the most part, up, and the other, for 

 the most part, down, and each having faculties and purposes of its own. 



"But the pure one, which loves the light (the leaf), has, above all things, the 

 purpose of being married to another leaf, and having child-leaves, and children's 

 children of leaves to make the earth fair for ever. And when the leaves marry they 

 put on wedding robes, and are more glorious than Solomon in all his glory, and they 

 have feasts of honey, and we call them flowers." 



This is not the time or place to teach the infinite details of botany, but every 

 gardener and amateur should at least know the first principles on which all plants what- 

 ever are arranged. The first great division consists of the fiowering and fruiting 

 plants, and the second division is made up of the flowerless plants, thus : — 



* See " Metamorphoses of Plants.' 



English translation. Cox & ^Masters. 



