A history of the vegetable kingdom. Embracing the physiology, classification, and culture of plants, with their uses to man and the lower animals, and their application in the arts, manufactures, and domestic ecomony / By William Rhind.

Rhind, William, active 1818-1867.

Date:: [1840?]

Credit: A history of the vegetable kingdom. Embracing the physiology, classification, and culture of plants, with their uses to man and the lower animals, and their application in the arts, manufactures, and domestic ecomony / By William Rhind. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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OF THE SEED AND GERMINATION. 101 as peaches, apples, melons, strawberries, goose¬ berries, currants, &c., are applied, The pericarp of the olive yields the purest and most esteemed oil. Wine, so useful to man, when used in moderate quantity, is prepared of the juice ob¬ tained by pressure from the fruits of the vine, by submitting it to fermentation. Several other fruits, such as apples, pears, rowans, &c., afford fermented liquors, which supply provinces and entire nations with their ordinary drink. In the interior of several pericarps of the family of Leguminosse, there is found an acidu¬ lous or sweetish, but sometimes nauseating sub¬ stance, which possesses laxative properties; as is observed in the cassia, the tamarind, the follicles of the senna. Dates, figs, jujubes, and dried raisins are alimentary substances which are re¬ markable for the great quantity of saccharine principle which they contain. The fruits of the lemon and orange-trees contain citric acid nearly in a pure state. The small berries of the buckthorn (rhamnus cotharticus) are highly purgative. Seeds are not less rich in nutritious principles than pericarps. Those of the cereal plants or gramineae, and of many leguminosce, contain a large quantity of starch, which renders them highly nutritive. The seeds of the common flax, the quince, and the psyllium, also contain a very abundant mucilaginous principle, which renders them essentially emollient. Many seeds are distinguished by possessing a highly aromatic stimulant principle. Such are those of the anise, the fennel, the coriander, and the caraway, which are named carminative seeds. Others, again, produce a refrigerant or sedative effect upon the animal economy; such as those of the calabash, the cucumber, the melon, and the water-melon. The carminative seeds all belong to the family of umbel life ne; the refrigerant to the cucurbita- ceae. The roasted seeds of the coffee and cocoa, are used by all civilized nations. From the seeds of the almond, walnut, beech, ricinus, hemp, and poppy, an abundant oil is obtained, which possesses properties modified in each of these plants by its being mixed with other substances. The seeds of bixaorellana are used for dying reddish brown. CHAP. XVII. OF THE SEED AND GERMINATION. We have seen that the fruit is essentially composed of two parts, the pericarp and the seed. The seed is that part of a perfect fruit which is found in the internal cavity of the pericarp, and which, contains the body that is destined to reproduce a new individual. There are no naked seeds, strictly so called: in other words, none which are not covered by a pericarp. But this latter organ is sometimes so thin, or adheres so closely to the seed, that it cannot easily be dis¬ tinguished at the period when the fruit is ripe, on account of their being intimately attached to each other, and confounded, although the two parts were perfectly distinct in the ovary after fecundation. Hence it is absolutely necessary to examine the structure of the ovary with at¬ tention, in order to understand the structure which the fruit is to have. Thus in the grasses and synanthereae, the pericarp is very thin and intimately adherent to the seed, from which it is very difficult to dis¬ tinguish it. This is equally the case in many umbel liferae, and other plants; whereas if we examine them in the ovary, these two parts are very distinct from each other. Every seed comes from a fecundated ovule. Its essential character consists of its containing an organized body, which, on being placed in favourable circumstances, is developed and con¬ verted into an individual perfectly similar to that from which it derived its origin. This body is the embryo, which is therefore the essential part of the seed. The seed is formed of two parts: 1st, The episperm, or proper integument; 2dly, The ker¬ nel contained within the episperm. The part of the seed by which it is attached to the pericarp, is named the umbilicus or Jiilum, represented fig. b, in the common wheat. It is also familiarly known as the eye of the com¬ mon bean. The hilum is always mark¬ ed, on the proper integument, by a kind of cicatrix or scar of greater or less extent, which never occupies more than a part of its surface, and by means ot which the vessels of the trophosperm communi¬ cate with those of the proper integument of the seed. The centre of the hilum always repre¬ sents the base of the seed. Its summit is indi¬ cated by the point diametrically opposite to the hilum. When a seed is compressed, the surface which looks to the axis of the pericarp is the face, and that which is directed towards the wall of the pericarp is named the back. The margin or edge of the seed is represented by the meeting of the face and back. When the liilum is situated on some part of the edge of the seed, the latter is said to be com¬ pressed. It is depressed, when the hilum is placed on its face or back. Every seed connected by its extremity with the bottom of the pericarp, or of one of its cells, when it is multilocular, and following the same direction in a more or less decided manner, is

A history of the vegetable kingdom. Embracing the physiology, classification, and culture of plants, with their uses to man and the lower animals, and their application in the arts, manufactures, and domestic ecomony / By William Rhind.

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