7o 



Keegan : The Fades of our Forest Flora. 



be formed it is necessary that its rudiment, i.e., its bud, should 

 precede it, and on the supposition that the vital energy of the 

 tree has been previously expended very exhaustively on the 

 formation of some other organ, a very large leaf for instance, 

 then there might not be sufficient left over to bring about the 

 creation of a bud. In fact, moreover, a bud is in some respects 

 a storehouse of reserve materials, and the elements in its imme- 

 diate vicinity are specially rich in protoplasm, starch, etc. 

 Hence if the tree is capable of building many buds at any time, 

 it must have plenty and to spare of those materials which are 

 most conducive to the sustenance of its life energy ; but this 

 can hardly be the case if, as in the tropics, its energies are 

 always on the move, so to speak. It cannot under these 

 circumstances ' burn the candle at both ends' ; that is to say, it 

 cannot possibly exert a tremendous previous energy in the 

 formation and rapid growth of a very large leaf and at the 

 same time lay by and hold over the requisite amount of similar 

 energy incident to the creation of a well-magazined bud, or a 

 thoroughly matured seed. 



At the Equator, as has been said, a plant is always in a 

 forcing-house ; it runs all to leaf and rarely matures its seed. 

 Even at Honolulu, in latitude 21 N. , banana leaves grow on an 

 average four or four and a half inches per day, and ultimately 

 attain a length of ten feet in some cases. It is useless to 

 multiply instances ; at all events, we understand now that in 

 comparison with the number of the leaves in tropical trees 

 a smaller number of buds is formed in their axils, and hence 

 the number of side branches is greatly restricted. Tropical trees 

 form fewer lateral shoots and branches than ours do ; some- 

 times, indeed, none are formed at all. As Wiesner says, ' the 

 larger the leaves of a tree are, so much the less possible, but 

 also so much the less necessary, is the branching of the stem.' 



With the foregoing facts and deductions under review, let 

 us now endeavour to catch and appreciate the distinctive 

 characteristics of our own widely-familiar forest and woodland 

 vegetation. There is nothing monotonous or stereotyped about 

 it : the salient feature is its umbrageousness. No doubt the 

 foliage of our most picturesque trees presents breaks and 

 hollows, but the Sycamore, the Lime, Horse Chestnut, Elm, 

 Beech, etc., throw out for the most part a grand unbroken 

 mass, an umbrageous and thickly-clothed head in no way 

 monotonous, but bristling and waving with apparently serried 

 ranks of separate and individual component parts. But what is 



Naturalist, 



