Author : Leo Hartley Grindon
Release : 2013-09
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Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 678/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Phenomena of Plant Life by : Leo Hartley Grindon

Download or read book The Phenomena of Plant Life written by Leo Hartley Grindon. This book was released on 2013-09. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II. EARLY SPRING. The essential sign of spring in northern latitudes is the swelling of the buds upon the trees, and those of the sturdy bushes which the husbandman uses for hedges. The appearance of flowers, except to the experienced eye, cannot always be depended upon. Many that would be thought heralds of the new season are in reality relics of the year that has departed, --epitaphs on the summer of six months before, --memorials rather than prophecies. Such is the case with the wall-flower, which is often seen plentifully in bloom in January, unless the winter be very severe, --the succession of flowers from side-shoots having proceeded uninterruptedly perhaps since the previous May. This long-protracted flow of bloom is usually attributable to the flowers being gathered for lovetokens or personal pleasure, and thus hindered from fulfilling the grand purpose for which all flowers are in every case developed, namely, the origination of seed from which new plants shall be reared, to take the place of the parents, when the latter lie withered and dead. As long as a plant is hindered from proceeding with the due preparation of its intended. seeds, so long will it persist in its efforts, and renew them, striving, till all its vitality is exhausted, to leave if it be only a single voucher of its honest toil. A thousand times have I noticed this wonderful and quiet energy in operation. In the fields some hungry quadruped bites off the young green flower-head as a relish to the insipid grass;--no matter, from every joint below, a new shoot is soon put forth; and in a few weeks, where there would have been, perhaps, no more than a single blossom, there are now a dozeo. flowers. So in the garden some lily hand crops a flower white as