Vegetable organography; or, an analytical description of the organs of plants / by Aug. P. de Candolle. Translated by Boughton Kingdon.

  • Candolle, Augustin Pyramus de, 1778-1841.
Date:
1839-1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vegetable organography; or, an analytical description of the organs of plants / by Aug. P. de Candolle. Translated by Boughton Kingdon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a loose and succulent tissue ; but their situation and history are still very obscure, and deserve to occupy most particularly the attention of anatomists. We will return to this subject in speaking of the Air cavities, and Receptacles of proper juices. It must be seen from the foregoing, that the principal property of the cellules or vesicles forming the cellular tissue, is the faculty of uniting together. This property plays an important part in the whole history of vege¬ tation : not only to its different degrees are all the internal appearances of the tissue to be referred, but also it is these combinations of the cellular tissue that cause all the combinations of the different organs, which, at first being distinct, finally form a single texture, in appearance simple, in reality compound. A second peculiarity of the tissue of the cellules is, that they are eminently hygroscopic ; that is to say, that they absorb water with which they may be in contact, and in particular that which is conveyed by the Inter¬ cellular passages. Probably this water, deposited in the cellules, undergoes a particular elaboration, from which results the formation of the substances which are ob¬ served in them* This hygroscopic property has appeared to me for a long time, as it did to Senebier, to be one of the principal bases of the phenomena of vegetable life. Kieser has also insisted, on a later occasion, upon its importance. Finally, the third property of this tissue appears to be organic contractility ; a phenomenon purely phy¬ siological, which I ought only to mention incidentally in this place, but without which it is difficult and perhaps impossible to comprehend the course of the sap.