58 
APPENDAGES TO PLANTS. 
stem, and branches, of plants ; they are hvhricated upon tho 
calyces of many of the compound flowers, often green, but 
sometimes colored. We have seen in buds how important are 
the scales in protecting the embryo plant during the winter. 
Scale-like calyces surround the flowers of grasses under the 
name of glumes. Scales envelop and sustain the stamens and 
fruit of the pine, oak, chestnut, &c. 
f. Tendrils (Fig. 67). A leaf-bud is sometimes Fig. 67. 
developed as a slender, spiral or twisted branch. In 
the vine the tendrils are considered as the termina- 
tions of separate axes, or transformed terminal huds. 
Ey means of tendrils weak stems attach themselves 
to other bodies for support ; they usually rise from 
the branches, in some cases from the leaf, and rare- 
ly from the leaf-stalk or flower-stalk. Tendrils are 
very important and characteristic appendages to 
many plants. In the trumpet-flower and ivy they 
serve for roots, planting themselves into the bark 
of trees, or in the walls of buildings. In the cu- 
cumber and some other plants they serve both for 
sustenance and shade. Many of the papilionaceous, or pea 
blossom plants, have twining tendrils, which wind to the right, 
and back again. Among vegetables which have tendrils, has 
been discovered that property which some have called the 
instinctive intelligence of plants. A poetical botanist repre- 
sents the tendrils of the gourd and cucumber, as "creeping 
away in disgust from the fatty fibers of the neighboring 
olive." It has been ascertained by experiments, that the 
tendrils of the vine, and some other plants, recede from the 
light, and seek opake bodies. The fact wdth respect to leaves 
is directly the reverse of this. 
Some plants creep by their tendrils to a very great hight, even to the tops of 
tlie loftiest trees, and seem to cease ascending, only because they can find nothing 
higher to climb. One of our most beautiful climbing plants is the clematis virgini- 
e-u, or virgin's bower, which has flowers of a brilliant wliiteness. Its pericarps 
richly fringed, are very conspicuous in autumn, hanging in festoons from the 
branches of trees, by the sides of brooks and rivers. 
g. Pubescence includes the down, hairs, wooliness or silki- 
ness of plants. The pubescence of plants varies in different 
soils, and with diflerent modes of cultivation. The species in 
some genera ^"f plants are distinguished by the direction of the 
hairs. The microscope is often necessary in determining with 
precision the existence and direction of the pubescence. It has 
been suggested that these appendages may be for similar pur- 
/. Tendrils—^. Pubesoenca. 
