Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/82

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62
Artificial Systems and Terminology of Organs
[Book I.

the upper, an idea which Goethe, in the fragment in Guhrauer, seems to have altogether misunderstood.

In connection with these general definitions, the different forms of the stem and of the ramification, and the varieties of leaves are pointed out and supplied with distinctive names, which are for the most part still in use. The fourth chapter treats of the division of the stem into internodes; if the stem or branch, says Jung, is regarded as a prismatic body, the articulations, that is, the spots where a branch or a leaf-stalk arises, are to be conceived of as cross-sections parallel to the base of the prism. These spots when they are protuberant are called knees or nodes, and that which lies between such spots is an internode.

It is not possible to quote all the many excellent details which follow these definitions; but some notice must be taken of Jung's theory of the flower, which he gives at some length from the 13th to the 27th chapters. It suffers, as in Cesalpino, from his entire ignorance of the difference of sexes in plants, which is sufficient to render any satisfactory definition of the idea of a flower impossible. Like Cesalpino too he distinguishes the pistil from the flower, instead of making it a part of the flower. He regards the flower as a more delicate part of the plant, distinguished by colour or form, or by both, and connected with the young pistil. Like all botanists up to the end of the 18th century, he follows Cesalpino in including under the term fruit both the dry indehiscent fruits which were supposed to be naked seeds, and any seed-vessel. He differs from him in calling the stamens 'stamina,' and the style 'stilus,' but like Cesalpino he uses the word 'folium' for the corolla. He calls a flower perfect only when it has all these three parts. He afterwards describes the relations of form and number in the parts of the flower, and among other things he enunciates the first correct view of the nature of the capitulum in the Compositae, which Cesalpino quite misunderstood; and he examined inflorescences and superior and inferior flowers, which Cesalpino