Elements of Physiophilosophy

by Lorenz Oken

1327. The seeds of plants with spathose leaves consist too only of the latter, i. e. the seed-leaves remain encased in each other. They have consequently only one seed-lobe, which also incloses only one plumule—Monocotyledones.

1328. This seed-lobe is a phylloidal leaf, whose parenchyma has been superabundantly filled with farinaceous matter or flour.

1329. That which is named vitellus can be none other than the succeeding counter-leaf.

1330. What in the Monocotyledons, at least in most of them, and in the grasses, is called albumen, is not so, but only the flour of the seed-lobe.

1331. The germination of these seeds is nothing else than an elongating of the spathiform seed-lobe into a culm, from the bottom of which radicles spring forth, as out of a bulb. A monocotyledonous seed is in its structure none other than a small bulb with undivided coverings.

1332. Lastly, the third form of seeds makes its appearance in those plants which have only scale-like leaves. The seed-lobe is wanting in them, and they elongate themselves directly into the plumule or little stalk—Acotyledones.

1333. They are devoid of the distinction of testa and embryo, because, on account of the deficiency of genuine leaf-formation, they are none other than the first. For the embryo is only a small leaf. They therefore include only albumen or germinal powder, as it is correctly named.

1334. Here belong not merely fungi, fuci, lichens and mosses, but also the ferns, as being those which have only cells or squamoid leaves. For the frond with the spiral vessels does not rank in the category of leaf, but of stalk.

FRUIT.

1335. The fruit is the coalescence or blending of the three parts of the flower, or the seed, ovarium and corolla. In the flower the individual perfection of every part of the trunk was completely attained; the leaves being separated quite freely from the stalk became corolla; the stalk separated from the leaves and root became pistil; lastly, the root separated from all, became the seed. In this manner indeed each organ attained its ratio of perfection; the perfection, however, of the Whole does not alone consist in the perfection of the several parts for themselves, but in the union or combination of these individual perfections. The vegetable trunk, as being a Partial, has been represented in the parts of the flower, but as a Whole, in the fruit.