The Ohio VTjaturalist, 
PUBLISHED BY 
The Biological Club of the Ohio State University. 
LIBRAS 
NEW YO 
BOTANIC 
GARDE 1 
Volume XII. DECEMBER, 1911. 
No. 2. 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
Schaffner— The Classification oi Plants, VII 409 
MacCoughey— The Birds of Darke County, Ohio 420 
Fox— Ohio Grown Perilla 426 
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTS, VII . 1 
John H. Schaffxer. 
There can be little question as to the general importance of a 
correct taxonomy; for the views of all botanists, whether they 
deal directly with classification or not, must be more or less 
influenced by the scheme of supposed relationships which they 
follow. On the arrangement accepted must depend one’s ideas 
of what are high and low plants, and this again must have its 
effect on one’s views about derivation and evolution. Thus one 
finds the arguments advanced by various authors based very 
largely on the classification followed. The viewpoint must 
certainly be fundimentally different when, on the one hand, 
primitive forms are recognized in such remarkably specialized 
trees as Casuarina, or, on the other, in a general type like Magnolia. 
Ecological adaptations must be explained on the same basis. 
One must determine whether anemophilous and hydrophilous 
flowering plants are the more primitive or those that are ento- 
mophilous ; whether the bisporangiate or monosporangiate flowers 
represent the original type; whether vestigial organs are to be 
regarded as being derived from normal ones and thus as indicat- 
ing lines of evolution. 
When a correct series is established, there is often a remarkable 
parallelism between the evolutionary development and special- 
ization of the flower and the completeness of the ecological adap- 
tation. Thus in the lowest Alismales the plants are aerial with 
showy bisporangiate flowers having numerous parts in spirals 
and usually possessing nectar glands, while the most specialized 
species are completely aquatic with reduced monecious or diecious 
flowers without perianth and with hydrophilous pollination. 
O', 1. Contributions from the Botanical Laboratory of Ohio State 
University, 64. 
O 
409 
