The Romance of Plant Life

But in warmer countries onions and garlic are much more important, where they have flavoured almost every dish since the days of Nestor's banquet to Machaon in Asia, and of the Emperor Nero in Italy, until our own days.

But the subject is so inexhaustible, depending as it does upon man's powers of invention and his tendency to weird superstitions, that we must close this chapter and also the book.

And we will end by asking the reader to think sometimes of all these many and various ways in which plants help and interest man.

It is not merely because our life depends upon them. Everything that we eat has been produced by plant life and plant work.

Tea, coffee, cocoa, and wine are pleasant because plants have produced some essence which is found useful and agreeable by mankind. Even water would be tasteless and unwholesome were it not for the minute diatoms and other microscopic vegetables in it.

But those who take an interest in flowers and leaves for themselves, find that they need never spend a dull hour in the country. There is so much to see and to find out, even in the commonest weed or the tiniest floweret.

But it is necessary to sympathize with them, to try to look at things from their point of view, and not merely from an artistic or collector's standpoint.

The romance of plant life then becomes a fascinating and engrossing pursuit. But however long one studies it, the knowledge that the wisest naturalist can ever attain to must remain a negligible quantity compared with what he does not know.

Suppose a mouse happened to stray into the office of the editor of the Times, he might boast to his fellow-mice of his knowledge of the "higher journalism," but his opinions would not really be of very great value on the subject.

However hard we study, and however much we observe and reflect upon the working of this great world of Nature, we really cannot expect to know more relatively than that little mouse.

In fact, the more we think, the more humble men of heart we become, and the greater also should be our reverence for the Creator of this wonderful universe.

1

Kerner, Natural History of Plants; also Scott Elliot, Nature Studies – Plant Life.

2

The gas Carbonic acid consists of one part of Carbon and two of Oxygen. It is invisible, just as are the gaseous states of many liquids and solids. Water-vapour is not visible, though water (liquid) and ice can of course be seen. Starch, sugar, cell wall substance, etc., all contain Carbon, Oxygen, and Hydrogen. Vegetable fat is not well understood, but starch helps to form it.

3

The ascent is assisted by the osmotic absorption of water at the root and by evaporation at the leaves.

4

This is still the custom in the huts of the wizard or medicine-man in West Africa, where one finds small cushions stuck over with all sorts of poisonous plants, bits of human bones, and other loathsome accessories.

5

Cooke, British Fungi.

6

The same "woad" which was used by the Britons to paint themselves with.

7

Lascelles, Pharm. Journ., 23 May, 1903.

8

Bonnier, Cours de Botanique.

10

"Guarda il calor del sol che si fa vino

Giunto all' umor che dalla vite cola."

He is speaking of wine – that "lovable blood," as he describes it.

11

Hartig finds the specific gravity of the wood in a tree is increased from 0-60 to 0.74 when the surrounding wood has been cut down. —Bot. Central, vol. xxx, p. 220.

12

Bonnier, Cours de Botanique.

13

Bonnier, l. c.

14

Dunlop House, Kilmarnock.

15

It will be remembered that they were obliged to keep the sacred fire always burning, and were put to death if they misbehaved. The fire was never allowed to go out during the whole of Roman history, and the custom has been even preserved in some Roman Catholic convents and chapels.

16

Seven Seas.

17

Munro, Lake Dwellings.

18

Royal Dublin Society, vol. i. part v. No. 11.

19

Niven, Bot. Section British Association, 1901.

20

Boyd Watt, Cairngorm Club Journal, vol. iv. No. 20, January, 1903; Smith, Lewis, Roy. Geog. Soc. Journal.

21

The Romans used it for ships' masts and spars.

22

Most of these interesting details are found in Boulger's valuable treatise on "Wood."

23

Compare the report by the Society of Arts.

24

The Toll of the Bush.

25

The historical account by Bonnier, Cours de Botanique, is very interesting and complete.

26

The pollen from the great pine forests of the Italian Alps blown up to the snow becomes used in nourishing the Pink or Red Snow Algæ, which colours it a delicate rose-pink. In lower grounds all such pollen becomes, like leaf-mould, a manure for other plants. There is no waste, strictly speaking.

27

Pharmaceutical Journal, May 20th, 1899.

28

Buscalioni e Traverso, Atti del Ist. Bot. di Pavia, vol. 10, 1904.

29

Von Buttel, Respen.

30

Linnæus and many others have made Floral Clocks. Kerner, Natural History of Plants, describes the opening and closing of flowers very fully.

31

Huck, Unsere Honig u. Bienenpflanzen. These are drawn up for Germany, and cannot be warranted for this country.

32

Memories of the Months.

33

Compare Shelley, who watched all day "the yellow bees in the ivy bloom," but he "did not heed what things they be." Moreover, though he appreciated the general spirit of the bee, it is very unlikely that he saw any of them on the Ivy!

34

Kerner and Oliver, l. c., vol. 1, p. 88.

35

Annals of Botany, 1904.

36

Lilienfeld, Beihefte z. Botan. Centralblatt, Band XIV., abth 1, pp. 131-212. The facts were denied by Newcombe and Rhodes, Bot. Gazette, 36, 1904.

37

If the growing part itself touches a stone it curves round the stone, not away from it – the reverse of the reaction at the tip!

38

Pfeffer, l. c., p. 139.

39

This weed is a cure for gout, and seems to have been called Bishopsweed because it was supposed that gout was a common ailment of bishops!

40

By the classical researches of Rimbach.

41

Scott Elliot and Fingland, Trans. Nat. Hist. Soc. Glasgow, vol. 5, New Series, part ii., 1897-8.

42

See Rimbach's researches.

43

Schimper, Pflanzengeographie. The account is based on the works of Pynaert, Sachs, Askenasy, etc.

44

Kerner, Natural History of Plants (Blackie), vol. 1, p. 468.

45

Naturalist in Mid-Africa.

46

Naturalist in Mid-Africa.

47

Floyer.

48

Drude, Vegetation der Erde.

49

Drude, l. c.

50

Rawlinson, Story of Egypt.

51

Ridley, l. c.; Lindley, l. c.; Maisch, Materia Medica.

52

This was suggested by Tyndall, but has been denied by others.

53

Journal Society of Arts, August, 1896.

54

Heuzé, Les Plantes Industrielles. Most of the following details are obtained from this valuable work.

55

4,400,000 pounds of roses were produced in France in one year.

56

In 1899 Philippopolis produced 1800-2000 kilogrammes of otto of roses, worth 700 to 800 francs the kilo. (Pharm. Journ. Sept. 1st, 1900).

57

Watt, Economic Dictionary of the Products of India. This valuable work of reference should be consulted for interesting details as to all the plants cited in this chapter.

58

Wrightson, Journal R. Agr. Soc., Second Series, vol. 10, part ii. p. 312; Jenkins, Ibid., vol. 11, part i. p. 192; De Lanne, Ibid., vol. 23, part i. p. 213. Carter, Tobacco in England.

59

Dunning, Tobacco, 1876.

60

Journal Society of Arts, March, 1896.

61

Darwin, Naturalist's Voyage round the World in the Beagle, p. 387.

62

Schimper, l. c., p. 674.

63

Schimper, l. c., p. 653.

64

Ridley, Pharmaceutical Journal, May 19th, 1900.

65

Scott Elliot, Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin., vol. 18, p. 243.

66

Used to make billiard balls.

67

Kipling.

68

As the story probably differs in detail for every district, the author is obliged to confine himself to ground which he has actually seen and studied.

69

Mr. Chisholm, Geographical Journal, November, 1897.

70

Sir H. Maxwell, Memories of the Months, First Series.

71

This may of course have been an exaggeration, a sort of joke. But he had no right to make jokes on such a subject.

72

Mr. John Murray, of Murraythwaite, referring probably to 1780, from Singer, Agricultural Survey of Dumfriesshire, 1812.

73

The agricultural rents in Dumfriesshire were valued in 1656 at £13,225, in 1790-1800 as £109,700, in 1808 £219,037 10s. 8d. In 1905 the value per acre was from £1 to £2.

74

Warming, Lehrbuch der Œcol Pfl. Geog.

75

Drude, l. c.; Schimper, l. c.; Warming, l. c.; Colonial Reports, No. 3, Miscellaneous. Schimper, Indo-Malayische Strandflora.

76

Drude, l. c.; Schimper, l. c.; Warming, l. c.; Colonial Reports, No. 3, Miscellaneous. Schimper, Indo-Malayische Strandflora.

77

Flahault, after Schimper, l. c.

78

Lecidea has at least 230 species on British stones and rocks (Leighton).

79

Engler, Humboldt's Centenaarschrift, 1889.

80

Warming, Lehrbuch der Oekol. Pfl. Geog.

81

Kerner, l. c., vol. I, p. 447.

82

Scott, Annals of Botany, vol. 11, p. 327.

83

Scott Elliot, Naturalist in Mid Africa.

84

Mr. Thomas Hamilton, Researches by Lanarkshire Teachers, 1902-3.

85

Lindley's Treasury of Botany.

86

Ridley, Pharmac. Journ., May 19, 1900.

87

Maxwell, Memories of the Months, First Series, 1, pp. 74-76.

88

Kerner, l. c.

89

Ridley l. c.

90

Evelyn, Silva.

91

Third Series, p. 60.

92

Memories of the Months, Third Series, p. 366.

93

I had expressed some doubt in my Nature Studies: Plant Life.

94

l. c., vol. I, p. 433.

95

Origin of Plant Structures, pp. 38-40.

96

Errera, Un Ordre de Recherches trop négligé. See also Ludwig, Biologie d. Pflanzen, p. 210.

97

Gard. Chronicle, 32, 390.

98

Lindley, l. c.; Ludwig, l. c.

99

Memories of the Month, First Series, p. 73.

100

Flowers, Fruit, and Leaves.

101

Nestler, Sitz. d. K. Akad. d. Wiss. Wien, vol. 3, p. 27.

102

Squiers, "On the Absorption of Electro-magnetic Waves by Living Vegetable Organisms," December 3, 1904.

103

Cooke, British Freshwater Algæ, on the authority of Phillips, Trans. Shropshire Natural History Society.

104

Dickie, Journal Bot. Soc. Edin., vol. 3, p. 79.

105

Coaz, Mittheilungen d. Naturf, Berne, 1886.

106

Schimper, l. c.; Drude, l. c.

107

Ling Roth, Journ. Anthrop. Inst., vol. 22, London, 1892; and Mason, l. c.

108

Tristram, Land of Israel; Mason, Origin of Inventions, p. 298.

109

The pupil of the eye is enlarged by belladonna.

110

British Association, Liverpool, 1896, Section K.

111

Plants Reputed Poisonous to Stock. Bailey & Gordon, Brisbane.

112

Reid, Origin of the British Flora.

113

Queensland in 1900 had 6215 acres, and produced 2,321,108 bunches of bananas.

114

Journal Royal Horticultural Society, vol. 27, part iv.

115

Reid, Origin of the British Flora.

116

Ludwig, Biologie d. Pflanzen.

117

Ludwig, l. c., after Ihne, Frauenfeld, Shaw.

118

Darbishire, Trans. and Proc. of Bot. Soc. Edin., vol. 23, part 1.

119

Kerner, Natural History of Plants, vol. 2.

120

Or whenever they could do so successfully. (Publisher's note.)

121

Hackel, True Grasses.

122

Hackel, True Grasses.

123

De Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants.

124

Drude, Handbuch Pflanzengeographie, p. 107.

125

Reid, Origin of the British Flora.

126

Report of the Botanical Department N.J. Agricultural Experiment Station, 1891.

127

Perceval, Agricultural Botany.

128

Masters, Nature, July, 1899.

129

Journal Farmers' Club, February, 1900.

130

For full details see Watts, Economic Dictionary of Products of India; Muller, Select Extra-tropical Plants.

131

Proceedings Linnean Society, 1861. Dr. MacCook adds nothing essential, and in no way disproves Dr. Lincecum's statements.

132

Belt, Naturalist in Nicaragua.

133

Kerner, l. c., vol. 2, fig. 264, p. 242.

134

This is not quite certain.

135

Rudyard Kipling has a most interesting account of the great opium factory at Malwa.

136

Chambers's Journal, Oct. 24th, 1896.

137

Contemporary Review, Dec., 1905. Mr. Herbert Samuel, M.P.

138

Collins, Gutta-percha and Indiarubber.

139

Henslow, Origin of Plant Structures; Warming, Rev. Gen. de Bot., tom. 5, p. 213.

140

Trans. and Proc. Bot. Soc. Pennsylvania, Session 1897-8, vol. 1, No. 1.

141

Pfeffer, Pflanzen-Physiologie, vol. 2, p. 412.

142

For the above facts: Pfeffer, Pflanzen-Physiologie, vol. 2, pp. 423-8; Green, Vegetable Physiology, p. 389; Kerner, l. c., p. 697; Bonnier, l. c., p. 305.

143

Henslow, Origin of Plant Structures, p. 223.

144

Henslow, l. c.

145

In the first, the entangled underground stems and roots resemble a bird's nest; in the second, the peculiar red rhizomes are rather like coral.

146

Dr. Bull, Journal of Botany, vol. 2, p. 273.

147

Kerner and Oliver, Natural History of Plants, vol. 1, p. 136.

148

Groom, Ann. Bot., 1903, p. 223.

149

Kerner, Natural History of Plants. Many details are taken from this work in the present chapter.

150

Dennett.

151

Green, Vegetable Physiology, p. 203.

152

Annals Botany, vol. 3, p. 253, and vol. 6, p. 401.

153

Macchiati, Botan. Centralblatt, 41, 190.

154

Miall, Nature, Aug., 1898, p. 377.

155

Heuzé, Les Plantes Industrielles.

156

Figured in Kerner's Natural History of Plants.