THE WINTER LIFE OF PLANTS. 
209 
form a series of annuli or rings, for wliicli botanists have no 
name, and which we have ventured to call ( gemma vestigia) 
vestiges of buds. Whenever these rings are found on the bark 
of young shoots, they show the position of the winter leaves 
and the terminal bud of the season, — in fact, the point where 
the growing shoot entered on the stage of rest. Hence the 
interval of shoot between two sets of bud-rings shows one 
year’s growth ; and therefore the number of sets of annuli shows 
the age of the shoot. 
The reader will better understand our meaning if he will 
look at the plate which accompanies this paper. 
Plate IX., fig. 1, represents one year’s growth of the beech- 
tree ( Fagns sylvatica), with five buds and their spirally arranged 
scales or winter leaves. The cicatrix or leaf -scar s, left by 
the summer leaf, is visible at the base of each bud ; and the 
annular scars left by the winter leaves of the previous year are 
to be seen at the base of this shoot, marked a. 
These parts are more conspicuous in fig. 2, which shows 
two shoots of the horse-chestnut tree (JEsculus hippocastanum ) , 
one the growth of a single year, the other the growth of ten 
years; yet both shoots are nearly the same size. We have 
placed them together for the sake of comparison. 
The leaf-scar s, left by the nutritive summer leaves, is very 
large in the horse-chestnut, and on its surface are seven black 
dots, the broken ends of the fasciculi, or bundles of woody 
fibre, which, uniting together, form the leaf-stalk, and, separating 
again at its top, form the costae or midribs of the seven leaflets. 
This tree derives its popular name from the resemblance of 
its leaf-scar to the shoe of the horse, those black dots cor- 
responding with the nails in the shoe ! 
In the ten years’ shoot it will be seen that there are on the 
scars of the summer leaves only five dots ; consequently there 
were only five leaflets to each leaf. The contrast between the 
broad open scar left by the summer leaves and the contracted 
ring-like scars of the winter leaves, is in this instance very 
striking. It is also evident that the vegetative power of the 
ten years’ shoot was ten times less each year than that of the 
one year’s shoot ; because it has taken this shoot ten years to 
make a growth equal to the growth of the one year’s shoot. As 
the growth of the shoot depends on the matter derived from 
the leaves, and as in this case very little was supplied, the shoot 
itself is cylindrical, not conical, like the one year’s shoot. 
Fig. 3 is a twig of the tulip poplar ( Lirioclenclron tulipifera), 
one of the forest trees of North America. The leaf-packing 
in this bud is peculiar and interesting, c represents the closed 
stipular bud ; cl, a stipular bud opened, with the two stipules 
reflected downwards, to show the inverted position of the 
