When you have studied all the plants carefully, you will see how true is this instinctive separation of the chief families, and how nature seems to have made five principal big families, so that both scientists and quite unlearned people see more or less clearly the limits she has set to each.
The family which is most highly advanced is that of the flowering plants, but the others, too, are well worth study, and we will now notice some of the points about their structure which are characteristic of each of the families.
CHAPTER XXIII.
FLOWERING PLANTS
All the plants which have flowers are put into one big family, about which you already know a good deal, because nearly all the plants we have studied up to the present have been plants which have flowers. Let us now go systematically over the chief points about their structure, so that we may have a clear idea of their characters, and be able to compare other families with them.
1. We find that the plant body is clearly marked out into root, stem, leaves, and flowers. The stem may be green and delicate, or it may be thick and strong like an oak tree, and on the stem or its branches we find the leaves.
2. The stem and root have definite strands of “water-pipe” cells, and very often the stems have many rings of wood, one of which is added every year.
3. The leaves are very various in the different plants, but they are generally thin and big, though they are seldom much more compound than those of the sensitive plant.
4. The flowers are easily recognized, as a rule, and consist of a number of parts, some of which are often brilliantly coloured. The stamens and carpels are generally in the same flower.