The lobes are reservoirs of prepared nutriment for the young seed, which is absorbed by its placental vessels, and converted into sugar, till it has penetrated with its roots far enough into the earth to extract sufficient moisture, and has acquired leaves to convert it into nourishment. In some plants these lobes rise from the earth and supply the place of leaves, as in kidney-beans, cucumbers, and hence seem to serve both as a placenta to the foetus, and lungs to the young plant. During the process of germination the starch of the seed is converted into sugar, as is seen in the process of malting barley for the purpose of brewing. And is on this account very similar to the digestion of food in the stomachs of animals, which converts all their aliment into a chyle, which consists of mucilage, oil, and sugar; the placentation of buds will be spoken of hereafter.]
[The silvery sap. l. 419. See additional notes, No. XXXVI.]
[Or drink the golden. l. 422. Linneus having observed the great influence of light on vegetation, imagined that the leaves of plants inhaled electric matter from the light with their upper surface. (System of Vegetables translated, p. 8.)
The effect of light on plants occasions the actions of the vegetable muscles of their leaf-stalks, which turn the upper side of the leaf to the light, and which open their calyxes and chorols, according to the experiments of Abbe Tessier, who exposed variety of plants in a cavern to different quantities of light. Hist. de L'Academie Royal. Ann. 1783. The sleep or vigilance of plants seems owing to the presence or absence of this stimulus. See note on Nimosa, Vol. II.]
XI. "Come, YE SOFT SYLPHS! who fan the Paphian groves,
And bear on sportive wings the callow Loves;
Call with sweet whisper, in each gale that blows,
The slumbering Snow-drop from her long repose;
445 Charm the pale Primrose from her clay-cold bed,
Unveil the bashful Violet's tremulous head;
While from her bud the playful Tulip breaks,
And young Carnations peep with blushing cheeks;
Bid the closed Petals from nocturnal cold
450 The virgin Style in silken curtains fold,
Shake into viewless air the morning dews,
And wave in light their iridescent hues;
While from on high the bursting Anthers trust
To the mild breezes their prolific dust;
455 Or bend in rapture o'er the central Fair,
Love out their hour, and leave their lives in air.
So in his silken sepulchre the Worm,
Warm'd with new life, unfolds his larva-form;
Erewhile aloft in wanton circles moves,
460 And woos on Hymen-wings his velvet loves.
[Love out their hour. l. 456. The vegetable passion of love is agreeably seen in the flower of the parnassia, in which the males alternately approach and recede from the female, and in the flower of nigella, or devil in the bush, in which the tall females bend down to their dwarf husbands. But I was this morning surprised to observe, amongst Sir Brooke Boothby's valuable collection of plants at Ashbourn, the manifest adultery of several females of the plant Collinsonia, who had bent themselves into contact with the males of other flowers of the same plant in their vicinity, neglectful of their own. Sept. 16. See additional notes, No. XXXVIII.]
[Unfolds his larva-form. l. 458. The flower bursts forth from its larva, the herb, naked and perfect like a butterfly from its chrysolis; winged with its corol; wing-sheathed by its calyx; consisting alone of the organs of reproduction. The males, or stamens, have their anthers replete with a prolific powder containing the vivifying fovilla: in the females, or pistils, exists the ovary, terminated by the tubular stigma. When the anthers burst and shed their bags of dust, the male fovilla is received by the prolific lymph of the stigma, and produces the seed or egg, which is nourished in the ovary. System of Vegetables translated from Linneus by the Lichfield Society, p. 10.]
XII. 1. "If prouder branches with exuberance rude
Point their green gems, their barren shoots protrude;
Wound them, ye SYLPHS! with little knives, or bind
A wiry ringlet round the swelling rind;
465 Bisect with chissel fine the root below,
Or bend to earth the inhospitable bough.
So shall each germ with new prolific power
Delay the leaf-bud, and expand the flower;
Closed in the Style the tender pith shall end,
470 The lengthening Wood in circling Stamens bend;
The smoother Rind its soft embroidery spread
In vaulted Petals o'er their fertile bed;
While the rough Bark, in circling mazes roll'd,
Forms the green Cup with many a wrinkled fold;
475 And each small bud-scale spreads its foliage hard,
Firm round the callow germ, a Floral Guard.
[Wound them, ye Sylphs! l. 463. Mr. Whitmill advised to bind some of the most vigorous shoots with strong wire, and even some of the large roots; and Mr. Warner cuts, what he calls a wild worm about the body of the tree, or scores the bark quite to the wood like a screw with a sharp knife. Bradley on Gardening, Vol. II. p. 155. Mr. Fitzgerald produced flowers and fruit on wall trees by cutting off a part of the bark. Phil. Trans. Ann. 1761. M. Buffon produced the same effect by a straight bandage put round a branch, Act. Paris, Ann. 1738, and concludes that an ingrafted branch bears better from its vessels being compressed by the callous.
A compleat cylinder of the bark about an inch in height was cut off from the branch of a pear tree against a wall in Mr. Howard's garden at Lichfield about five years ago, the circumcised part is now not above half the diameter of the branch above and below it, yet this branch has been full of fruit every year since, when the other branches of the tree bore only sparingly. I lately observed that the leaves of this wounded branch were smaller and paler, and the fruit less in size, and ripened sooner than on the other parts of the tree. Another branch has the bark taken off not quite all round with much the same effect.