THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS
By C. Stuart Gager
Director of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
In the conservatories of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden there is an exhibit designed to give a bird’s-eye view of the plant kingdom.[1] The specimens are arranged on a bench in the form of a tree, with a trunk and lateral branches (Fig. l). The trunk represents the main course of plant life through the ages; the branches are the great groups of plants. The plants now living on the earth are to be thought of as representing the tips of the branches of the genealogical tree.
Near the base of the trunk, on the lowest branch, are specimens of some of the simplest plants known. As we pass from these toward the other end of the bench we find plants of gradually increasing complexity, until we come to the orchids and composites at the topmost twigs.
Along the trunk of this family tree is a label indicating the changes met in a series of plants arranged in this order. The points where the branches leave the main trunk are “mile posts” calling attention to definite changes there represented. This long label is here reproduced, with the “mile-posts” in heavy-faced type. The names of the great groups of plants are in large and small capital letters:
- ↑ The exhibit here described was planned and installed by Dr. Alfred Gundersen, Curator of Plants, Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
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