On the development of the organization in phaenogamous plants / [M.J. Schleiden].

  • Matthias Jacob Schleiden
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the development of the organization in phaenogamous plants / [M.J. Schleiden]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tire families to which styles had been ascribed, as the grasses, possess stigmata sessilia only. Some few species belonging to these families, as Lygeum and Zea, possess an actual style. It has always appeared singular to me that the same botanists who, on the one hand, have advanced the position that the styles offer the surest means of determining the number of the carpels, because every carpel has its corresponding style, should, on the other hand, have ascribed only one carpel to the grasses, although they at the same time speak of several styles. A true style occurs equally seldom in the majority of the fa¬ mily Euphorbiaceae; indeed in Euphorbia, Ricinus, Andrachne, Crozophora, &c., in which more than one style has been de¬ scribed, there is either none at all, but merely stigmata sessilia bifida, or only one style present, as for instance in Euphor¬ bia, in which three carpellary leaves are united superiorly so as to form a tube, although a short one. We find the style also to be deficient in most of the Alismaceae, Malvaceae, Phytolaceee; they possess only stigmata: in some of these plants, for instance Ricinus and Phytolacca, the so-called sur¬ face of the stigma sinks down with its papillae as far as the basis of the carpel-leaves. It is equally incorrect to speak of rami styli in the Composites, which are in fact only forms of the double-lobed stigma. Hitherto little more than a tradi¬ tional meaning has been applied to the words style and stig¬ ma, and this has been still more corrupted by means of pre¬ tended logical distinctions. It will, however, be easily seen that if botany is to be treated in a really scientific manner, the terms must be based upon ideas, which being derived from the nature of the vegetable structure, imply certain actual organic differences, and can be adopted in a sense so strict as to avoid the possibility of including the most various things under the same term; or on the other hand of separating iden¬ tical organs by giving them different terms. The prosecution of the inquiry into the process of development also very sim¬ ply settles the old dispute as to whether the style possesses a canal or not. Since each style is formed either by the rolling together of a single leaf (apocarpous fruit, Lindl.) or through the union of the edges of many leaves (syncarpous fruit, Lindl.), it must always possess a canal, which certainly cannot be always recognised as a cavity upon making a section of the style in the open flower, since the internal layer of cellular tissue (Tissu conducteur, Brongniart, properly speaking the epidermis of the upper surface of the leaf,) becomes so ex¬ panded through alteration in the form of the cells and the ex¬ udation of mucus in the intercellular spaces, that the indivi¬ dual cells become completely detached from their connection,
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