A lecture on the geography of plants / By John Barton.

  • John Barton
Date:
1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A lecture on the geography of plants / By John Barton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    82/120 (page 70)
    Another family of plants which greatly dimi- nishes in number towards the equator, though it does not entirely disappear, consists of trees bearing catkins. Instead of attempting to de- fine this botanical term, it will be sufficient to refer to the Willow, the Hazel, the Birch, the Alder, and the Poplar, as specimens of the tribe. The form of the blossom in these trees will be familiar to the recollection of every one. The catkin-bearing trees* are proportionally twenty times less numerous in the torrid than in the temperate zones. Of those families of plants which arrive in the tropical regions at a magnitude unknown in our climate, may be enumerated the Grasses, the Ferns, and the Mallows *f\ Of the Grass tribe, we find a species in the south of Europe exceeding twenty feet in height, as I have alrea- dy mentioned. Within the tropics, however, we meet with one which rises to the height of sixty feet: this is the Bamboo. Its stalk, like that of other Grasses, is jointed and hollow; and so large, that it is employed by the people of India for constructing vessels to hold liquids, one joint being capable of containing a gallon or more. Sometimes portions of this hollow stalk are made use of as garden-pots, and young Amentaceae. -j- Malvaceae.