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    Botany for Gardeners - With Chapters on Plant Structure, Plant Breeding and the Life of the Germinating Seedling
    Botany for Gardeners - With Chapters on Plant Structure, Plant Breeding and the Life of the Germinating Seedling
    Botany for Gardeners - With Chapters on Plant Structure, Plant Breeding and the Life of the Germinating Seedling
    Ebook169 pages3 hours

    Botany for Gardeners - With Chapters on Plant Structure, Plant Breeding and the Life of the Germinating Seedling

    By Frederick W. Keeble

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    “Botany for Gardeners” is a classic guide to gardening aimed at the serious gardener and green-fingered enthusiast. It includes a wealth of useful and interesting botanical information coupled with beautiful diagrams and illustrations, making it a must-read for those with an interest in the science of gardening and plant propagation. This volume would make for a fantastic addition to gardening collections collection and is not to be missed by budding botanists. Contents include: “The Vegetable Kingdom”, “The Flowering Plant”, “Plant Breeding”, “Mendellian Characters”, “Variegation”, “Doubleness in Stocks”, “Plant Nutrition and Plant Structure”, “The Life of the Germinating Seedling”, “The Living Plant in Relation to External Conditions”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new introduction on the history of gardening.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateAug 26, 2016
    ISBN9781473353435
    Botany for Gardeners - With Chapters on Plant Structure, Plant Breeding and the Life of the Germinating Seedling

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      Book preview

      Botany for Gardeners - With Chapters on Plant Structure, Plant Breeding and the Life of the Germinating Seedling - Frederick W. Keeble

      BOTANY FOR GARDENERS

      INTRODUCTION

      A gardener has this great advantage over most other students of Botany, that he already knows much about plants. He has them constantly under observation, and his success as a cultivator depends on his understanding of their general and special requirements. That plants all need water and light, that they only flourish within a certain range of temperature, are facts of his every day experience. He knows that some will thrive in shade, and that other plants, if they are to flourish, must have a place in the sun. He has seen the unequal havoc which frost works in the garden, destroying this plant and leaving that plant unscathed, and he accordingly classifies them in groups—hardy, half-hardy, and tender, according to their susceptibilities to low temperature.

      Possessing already so large a fund of knowledge, a gardener might well ask whether it is worth while to study botany at all. It is: for the study of botany will help him to train his powers of observation, and knowledge of this science will enable the gardener to knit his observations into a coherent system. It will, moreover, help him to improve his methods of cultivation, and will assist him in understanding the reasons for many of the routine operations performed in the garden. But of all the reasons why a gardener should master the elements of botanical science the chief is, that botany, like the other natural sciences, is always growing. New discoveries about plants are constantly being made. All of them add to the sum of our knowledge, and some are bound to prove of direct service to the practical gardener. Once he has learned the main facts of botany as at present known, the gardener will be able to follow the progress of botanical discovery, will be in a position to apply it to the cultivation of plants, and by so doing will himself aid in the advancement of natural knowledge.

      The object of these chapters on botany for gardeners is to provide an introduction to the science sufficient to enable cultivators to read botanical textbooks with profit, to follow the course of botanical discovery with intelligent interest, and to appreciate, more fully than is possible without this knowledge, the meaning of the countless facts of plant-life which their vocation brings to their notice.

      Botany has for its object the discovery of the mode of life of plants and of the meaning of the variety of form which they present.

      Horticulture is concerned with the discovery, or production, and the perfecting of the cultivation of garden plants of economic or æsthetic value. Though their aims are different they have much in common. Both are based on a study of living plants, and both seek to know the laws which govern plant life. The general student of botany, who brings to his task little or no knowledge of plants, must begin at the beginning and study the plant in all its aspects. It is for such students that most textbooks of botany are written. To the gardener, however, these books which, of necessity, deal with many facts already well known to him are apt to be tedious. He finds but a limited interest in studying the new aspects of familiar facts which they present. He has his own point of view which is not, and should not be, that of the botanist. Therefore, since for the reasons already given, it is of advantage to the gardener to master the elements of botanical science, a method of approach more suited to his knowledge and requirements may be attempted. That method will consist in building upon the foundations already laid in gardeners’ practical experience.

      In order to prepare the way for this attempt to graft a knowledge of the principles of botany on the stock of gardening experience, the botanist must explain what is known of the extent and variety of the Vegetable Kingdom; for although the majority of plants which the gardener grows belongs to one division only of that kingdom, nevertheless he is also deeply, albeit indirectly, concerned with many other kinds of plants: with Fungi, which may spread pestilence in the garden, and with Bacteria, which may aid or thwart him in his efforts to build up a fertile soil. In order to understand the nature of plant life, to distinguish it from animal life, and to grasp the significance of the variety presented by garden plants, it is necessary to take a broad survey of the Vegetable Kingdom and to learn from the study of its simplest as well as of its most complex forms.

      THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM

      The plant life which exists in the world to-day is of almost infinite variety, and, even in a small garden, the number of different kinds of plants is far greater than the gardener who tends it might suspect. In that garden there are, of course, many different species of Flowering Plants, some planted intentionally by the gardener, others—the weeds—planted by chance.

      Beside the Flowering Plants, which may be recognized by the fact that they bear seeds in due season, there are also Ferns, which, as may be inferred from the fact that they do not bear seeds, belong to a division of the Vegetable Kingdom other than that in which the Flowering Plants are placed.

      The Mosses, which are apt to invade the lawns in winter and to make their appearance on damp walls, paths, and soil, are members of a yet lower division. The felt-work of green Algæ which covers old and dirty flower-pots and the damp surface of the soil in them; the Mushrooms which the gardener cultivates, and the numerous other Fungi which in autumn are to be found on almost every piece of decaying wood, serve to illustrate the fact, that beside Flowering Plants, Ferns, and Mosses, yet simpler forms of plant life flourish in the world. Nor does the list of the different kinds of plants met with in a garden end here, for in the soil always, and sometimes in the plants themselves, are to be discovered by the aid of the microscope minute living organisms—Bacteria (see fig. 59)—which, though they possess none of the characteristics of ordinary plants, are nevertheless to be counted as members of the Vegetable Kingdom.

      Fig. 56.—Animal and Plant Structure (see text)

      A, Euglena viridis. B, Chlamydomonas sp. Both highly magnified. c, Cytoplasm. n, Nucleus. f, Flagella. ch, Chloroplast. e.s., Eye-spot. g (in Euglena), gullet. c.w., Cell wall. py, Pyrenoid: consisting mainly of nitrogenous food-reserves (proteins). v, Vacuoles.

      These various kinds of plant, though they differ from one another in size, shape, and complexity, yet possess one characteristic common to them all which serves to distinguish them from the members of the Animal Kingdom. Every animal, no matter how simple, is provided with some kind of -opening through which solid substances may enter. The rest of the body may be covered with an impenetrable coat, but in the neighbourhood of this opening or mouth, the covering is not present, and masses or particles of solid food may pass through it into the body—cf. fig. 56, A, showing the opening leading from the outside into the gullet of a unicellular animal (Euglena viridis). Plants on the other hand are covered continuously by a membrane through which solid particles may not pass (cf. fig. 56, B); hence the only food-substances which they can obtain are those which are soluble in water. Thus, whereas animals may swallow solid food, plants absorb only food-substances in solution. Wherefore the gardener does well to remember that the more a fertilizer is soluble in water the smaller should be the amount applied to the soil at any given time.

      Fig. 57.—Ulothrix zonata, an aquatic filamentous alga

      1, Two filaments of this plant. 2, Escape of gametes in packets. 3, Spherical packet of gametes free from the filament. 4, Separation of the gametes. 5, Gametes swimming about and pairing. 6, Products of pairing of gametes (zygotes) attached to substratum. 7–9, Zygote giving rise to zoospores. 10, Two zoospores. 1, × 250; 2–10, × 400. (Partly after Dodel-Port.)

      As shown by this brief reference to the plants of a garden, the Vegetable Kingdom comprises five great sub-kingdoms or divisions, viz.:

      1. Seed-bearing plants (Spermaphyta), Flowering Plants, including Conifers, Cycads, &c.

      2. Ferns and Fern-like Plants (Pteridophyta).

      3. Mosses (Bryophyta).

      4. Algæ, Fungi, and Lichens (Thallophyta).

      5. Bacteria (Schizophyta).

      A sixth division, that of the Myxomycetes (Slime Fungi), is sometimes included in the Vegetable Kingdom and sometimes in the Animal Kingdom. For a description of the members of this division reference should be made to textbooks.

      The Seed-bearing Plants comprise the ordinary Flowering Plants, the seeds of which are produced in flowers of greater or lesser complexity, and the Conifers, Cycads, and allied plants with flowers which may be so simple as to consist of little or nothing more than the essential seed-producing parts.

      The Pteridophyta, which are distinguished from seed-bearing plants by the absence of seeds, show in their vegetative parts an organization into root-system and shoot-system in many respects similar to that of the seed-bearing plants.

      Fig. 58.—A branch of the Gulf-weed. Sargassum bacciferum, with leaves and air-sacs

      The Bryophyta (Mosses) lack true roots, their place being taken by delicate hair-like outgrowths of the axis which ramify in the soil and like true roots obtain from it water and mineral substances for their nourishment.

      The Thallophyta comprise two great groups of relatively simple plants, the Algæ and the Fungi, and also the Lichens (see fig. 104), which are dual organisms each consisting in part of an Alga, and in part of a Fungus. The Algæ include unicellular plants (e.g. Chlamydomonas), filamentous forms consisting of thread-like organisms built up each of a row of cells (cf. fig. 57), and also the more massive green, brown, and red seaweeds, some of which form the longest if not the largest plants in the world (cf. fig. 58).

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