CHAP. II. 
GLANDS. 
49 
particles which give a leprous appearance to the surface of 
certain plants, as the Elaeagnus and the Pine Apple. (Plate I. 
fig. 10. b.) They consist of a thin transparent membrane, 
attached by its middle, and, owing to the imperfect union, 
towards its circumference, of the cellular tissue of which it is 
composed, having a lacerated irregular margin. A scale of 
this nature is called in Latin composition lepis, and a surface 
covered by such scales lepidotus — not squamosus, which is 
only applied to a surface covered with the rudiments of leaves. 
Scurfs are the poils en ecusson (pili scutati) of De CandoUe. 
Ramenta {Vaginellce) are thin, brown, foliaceous scales, 
appearing sometimes in great abundance upon young shoots. 
They are particularly numerous, and highly developed, upon 
the petioles and the backs of the leaves of Ferns. They con- 
sist of cellular tissue alone, without any vascular cords, and 
are known from leaves not only by their anatomical structure, 
but also by their irregular position, and by the absence of buds 
from their axils. The student must particularly remark this, 
or he will confound with them leaves having a ramentaceous 
appearance, such as are produced upon the young shoots of 
Pinus. Link remarks, that they are very similar in structure 
to the leaves of mosses. The term striga has occasionally been 
applied to them (Dec. Theor, Elem. ed. 2. 376. Linh^ Elem, 
240.) ; but that word was employed by Linnaeus to designate 
any stiff bristle-like process, as the spines of the Cactus, the 
divaricating hairs of Malpighia, and the stiff stellated hairs of 
Hibiscus. So vague an application of the term is very properly 
avoided at the present day, and the substantive is rejected 
from modern glossology; the adjective term strigose is, how- 
ever, occasionally still employed to express a surface covered 
with stiff hairs. 
5. Of Glands. 
Glands are small collections of firm cellular tissue, which 
is often much harder and more coloured than that which sur- 
rounds it. They are of several kinds. 
Stalked glands are elevated on a stalk which is either simple 
or branched : they secrete some peculiar matter at their ex- 
E 
