PLANTS
Collecting plants has always been an important feature of practical scientific work. Great sums of money and many years of time have been spent in searching through little-explored countries for new plants. Agents of many governments, representatives of great nursery companies of this and other countries are all the time looking, looking, often at the cost of the greatest hardship, for new plants. Why is this? Not as you will readily conclude, merely to add new specimens to museum collections, nor merely to find and name a new species, though some collectors are in the field for these purely scientific reasons. But our Department of Agriculture is on the lookout for new plants from foreign parts which will be commercially valuable to us. Our enterprising nurserymen are after the same game. At the present time very great interest is being taken in plants from western China, a vast and little-explored region. Strangely enough, the plants from that far away country seem to be peculiarly fitted to thrive here, and while the government and the nurserymen are telling the people about these new plants, the botanists are trying to discover the reasons why Asiatic plants fit our conditions better than the plants of Europe seem to.
The making of collections of plants, then, is a big, important work, and well worth the while of any boy or girl. If you would read stories of exciting adventures, narrow escapes, thrilling encounters amid romantic surroundings, read some of the accounts of scientific explorations. The collectors of plants and insects in the Philippines, Central Asia, little-known islands of the far East, and such "wild nations," must needs be men of valour, and to know any one of them is a liberal education.
Making a collection of plants is probably not the best way to arouse an interest in outdoor life. Indeed it was made such a deadly dull business for me that my early interest was entirely "nipped in the bud" and lay dormant many, many years. Collecting is one of the recognized and useful ways of introducing ourselves to our neighbours of the vegetable kingdom. Living in a plant-infested world as we are elected to do, eating plants, wearing their products, utilizing them in all our arts, buying and selling them daily, unable to get through an hour of the day without being constantly reminded of our entire dependence upon the members of the vegetable kingdom, what is more natural than that we should wish to know them? To know their names is not the end and aim of plant study. The name is a convenient handle for a plant. It enables you to talk about the plant to others without the necessity of a lengthy description. It enables you to read understandingly what other students have said about the plant in books. It is only the beginning, like the introduction to a stranger. To make of a stranger a friend, you must know something of his family, of his relation to the rest of the world, how he lives, gets a living, how he makes use of his faculties, what are his peculiarities, his habits, his environment, in fact all about him. In discovering the name of a plant by use of a botanical key you learn a few but not all of these things.
As with some people so with some plants, the more you know of them the less you think of them; the less you wish to have to do with them. Take poison ivy for an example. Knowing its characteristics you pass it by without touching it. You observe it from afar off, so as to be able to warn others of its whereabouts. On the other hand, if you had only known well the giant puff-ball you so wantonly crushed under your heel, you might have enjoyed a delicious supper of creamed mushrooms.
Making a collection of plants is an extremely simple job. The materials needed are not expensive nor hard to get. Here is a list of what is required for a beginner's collection:
(1) A dozen or so newspapers.
(2) Driers, two or three dozen, 12 × 18 inches.
(3) Two boards, 12 × 18 inches.
(4) A stone of twenty to thirty pounds weight.
(5) Mounting paper.
(6) Genus covers.
Cut the newspapers into half sheets. Each specimen is to be placed in a folded piece of this. The driers may be cheap blotting paper or pieces of carpet felt, cut to the desired size.
Arrange a specimen just as it was taken from the ground, inside of one of the half pages of newspaper. While it is not desirable to put too much time on the arrangement of each specimen, it is as well to place it in a natural position and in such a way that the leaves will not lie all over each other and the flowers be crowded so that the appearance will be awkward. But do not overdo this: if a flower droops naturally, do not make it stick upright. With one of the boards as a foundation build your pile of pressing plants up as follows: Lay on two or more driers, then a folded newspaper holding a specimen, then a drier or two. (If the specimen is a juicy thing, several blotters are needed between it and the next one.) Now another specimen, a drier, a specimen, etc., until you are through with the day's collecting, or until the pile begins to topple. Finish with a drier, then put on the other board, and weight it with your big stone.
The driers must be changed every day. Do not disturb the specimens, but lift each folded newspaper from the old to the new pile, building up with fresh driers as before. In a week or ten days most plants will be thoroughly dry. If at all moist they are likely to mould after being mounted and your work will be spoiled. A dried specimen is brittle and needs careful handling.
Mounting paper, to be standard and uniform, should be white, plain paper of a very heavy quality. It costs a cent a sheet, size eleven and one half by sixteen and one fourth inches. No other size would be acceptable if you wish at some later time to donate your collection to the local museum or to sell it to some school.
There are several ways of fastening specimens to the sheet. Some like to use little strips of gummed paper or court-plaster, but old-fashioned glue is about the most satisfactory stuff. It is mussy to work with till you get your hand in, but it holds the plants fast to the sheet, and "that's the intintion." It is best to keep the specimens in the newspaper wrappers until you have a lot ready to mount. Then with a pot of glue, a dry cloth, a damp one, and a small brush you are ready for business. Lift the specimen from the newspaper and lay it first on the mounting sheet to get some idea beforehand of how you will place it. You may have to prune it some to get it all on, but this is not likely as your drying sheets are the same size as your mounting paper. Having decided at what angle to place it, lay the specimen back on the newspaper upside down. With your brush wet, but not dripping, with glue, brush the stems, buds, leaves, and flowers lightly over the back. Lift it again, turning it over as you transfer it to the white sheet. With a light pressure make the parts fast and lay the sheet aside for the glue to dry.
Small specimens should occupy a place just a little below the centre of the sheet, and if more than one specimen is required to show all parts they may be arranged on the sheet as their various shapes and sizes look best.
Plants should be mounted on paper 16¼ × 11½ inches
A few facts should accompany each plant to refresh your memory of that specimen when you come to study it later. These facts should have been recorded by you in whatever way you like and referred to the specimen by a number while in the press. Finally each mounted specimen should have its label, bearing the name of the plant, the collector's name, the date collected, locality, and any useful information regarding it. Glue the label into the lower right-hand corner, which should always be reserved for that purpose.
These loose sheets, covered with mounted specimens, must not be allowed to lie in a shelf or drawer unprotected. Each group of them should be put into a folded sheet of manilla paper. Such a holder is called a "genus cover." Its size, folded, is eleven and three fourths by sixteen and one half inches.
This word "genus" suggests that in time the collector is going to be able so to classify his specimens that each genus cover may contain only plants so closely related one to another that they are of the same botanical genus. The beginner need not be seriously disturbed if there are many plants in his collection that he does not know the names of yet. The collection is for study or it is worth nothing. Knowing plants is more important than knowing names. You cannot handle plants much and observe them in their places without noticing how different they are. Then you begin to see that some are more like than others. This is the beginning of classification. You need not know even the common names of the plants to do this, although you will know some, of course. Professor Bailey says: "Learn first to classify plants; names will follow. Look for resemblances, and group plants round some well-known kind. Look for sunflower-like plants, lily-like, rose-like, mint-like, mustard-like, pea-like, carrot-like plants. These great groups are families."
After you have handled your common plants a good deal you will be surprised to find how easily you can guess at one's family, and guess right.
When you have reached this stage in your collecting you will feel that you need some book to guide you and act as a check on your studies. All the books mentioned in the lists in this book are useful for beginners. If you find a book which pretends to take the place of the plants themselves, you would better throw your money away than buy it. Instead of helping it will hinder your progress. You will find in beginners' botanies what is known as a "key." Now, a key is obviously to unlock something with. If you had a door key which turned with difficulty, or fitted the lock imperfectly you would be sure to have it repaired or get a more modern one. Some of the old botanical keys seem to be rusty and it is difficult to use them. Choose the key that works most easily.
In making a key for classifying plants one begins by dividing the whole vegetable kingdom into two big departments, thus:
A. Plants which never have flowers.
AA. Plants which do have flowers.
As your specimens are all of the flowering kind we shall for the present forget all about the others and begin to divide our big group AA into smaller groups. This is how it is done:
AA. Flowering plants.
B. Flowers not showy, seeds in cones (usually), leaves needle—or scale-like, evergreen (usually).
BB. Flowers showy, seeds not in cones, leaves of various shapes, deciduous (usually).
You will see that in dividing a group it is important that A is just the opposite of AA, and B is just the opposite of BB, and that the place to look for BB is just the same distance over from the margin of the page as B although it may not be on the same page, if there are a great many divisions under B. These little things make the key easier to use than the old-fashioned ones were. Some people still use botanical keys as mental gymnastics but I do not believe in that. After all you are studying plants not keys.
You will want to go back to the group we called A, for to the non-flowering plants belong the lovely ferns which must certainly grace your collection. This is a delightful group to study and it is possible with a reasonable amount of persistence and by exchanging with fern collectors in other parts of the country to get a very nearly if not quite, complete collection of native forms. Only one hundred and sixty-five of the four thousand species of ferns are native to the United States. Such a collection should be very valuable.
Some boys and girls lose interest in collecting plants after the first season, especially if they have done well the first year and secured most of the species in their locality. If the opportunity to collect elsewhere does not come the next spring there can be nothing more interesting than to try to get the same things you already have, but in some other stage of their growth. For example: most collections will have several kinds of violets, blue, white and yellow, in all the beauty of their flowering. But whoever thought of getting one that showed the seed pods? What is a violet's seed pod like anyhow? Is the seed pod of the white one like that of the yellow? Are the seed pods of one plant all alike? When do the pods open and how? How do the seeds germinate and when? These and other questions are waiting to be answered by every plant in your collection. Would it not be fine to know the pure white trillium in midsummer when it has grown a leaf nearly a foot across and has a red fleshy seed case thrust up where it will be conspicuous? Some plants are far more showy in fruit than in flower and you will begin to see why these and other things are true as you carry on your studies throughout the year.
Many a teacher of botany is forced to depend upon pictures when she wishes to teach children to discriminate between two kinds of leaves, kinds of roots, kinds of stems, kinds of inflorescence. What a boon to those teachers would be a collection put up to illustrate the lessons as they came along! I wonder if there is not a market for such collections in schools where no herbariums are made or kept.
For little children, making blue prints is delightful occupation. I knew a child of four who learned to recognize the leaves of most of the common trees one spring by means of this work, and she did every bit of it alone. A small printing frame, blue print paper of the required size, and plenty of water is all that is required. A child soon learns to use good judgment in printing, exposing the frame just long enough to get a fine blue. The outline of the leaf comes out distinctly in white against a blue background. The prints should be thoroughly washed and may be dried on panes of glass.
The blue prints of leaves and of flowers do not show anything but the outlines, of course. Leaf prints of other kinds are made which bring out the veining as well. The outfit for this work is simple. Two print rollers, a pane of glass, and a tube of printers' ink, sheets of paper to print upon, and leaves. Put a small quantity of the ink on the clean glass, and work it into a thin film over the surface. Lay a leaf upon this film of ink and go over it with the inky roller. Transfer the leaf to a sheet of paper and cover with a second sheet. One whirl of the clean roller ought to give you the desired print. It is surprising how delicate and true these are and how perfectly they show the characteristic margin, indentations, venation, and even something of the texture of each leaf. A little practice makes one able to make impressions which are like leaf shadows, so delicate and lace-like can these prints be made. It is an excellent way of fixing the leaf forms in the memory, as well as in the note-book.
In making a collection of plants the same "rules of the game" should hold good as in collecting insects and other natural objects. Take only what you need. Do not uproot and leave to die the near neighbours of the specimens you select. The taking of rare specimens is discouraged. I shall never forget the look of indignation our dear old professor gave an ambitious youth who had uprooted for his paltry collection every plant of a species of rare fern which the professor had been trying for years to re-establish in its old location. After all is said and done, a live plant is better than a dead one. This is all a part of the great spirit of conservation that has so taken possession of our people of late years. Out of these little acts of preserving our resources will grow a more beautiful America and a better appreciation of all things beautiful.