Observations on the nature, longevity, and size of trees / by Alexander Harvey.

  • Harvey, Alexander, 1811-1889.
Date:
1846 [i.e. 1847?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the nature, longevity, and size of trees / by Alexander Harvey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    cease to be, and never afterwards become, the seat of any vital action. I. First, then, the annual growths emanating from the buds constitute, severally, perfect and independent plants ; and a succession of such plants may be kept up from year to year, for ever, from buds alone. On the return of spring, “ when the earth, by an annual miracle, rises again, as from her grave, into life and beauty,” we see the buds on each of the stems of the previous year, first swelling, and afterwards sending out an entirely new stem, new leaves, flowers, and buds, all of which are per- vaded and connected together by a new set of circulating vessels or cells. And in the course of the season seed forms and is matured. Now, in this annual formation, we have issuing from the buds on the stems of last year all the parts essential to the constitution of a perfect plant; and on the new stem of this year we have buds provided for the evolu- tion of such a plant next year. With the view of shewing more distinctly, at once the in- dividuality and the independency of the growths thus formed, and their claim to be regarded as perfect plants, and the ability of each of them to reproduce its kind annually in end- less perpetuity from buds, reference may, in the first in- stance, be made to what obtains in the potato-plant—a plant which, though not a tree, contains all the elements of one, and is equally perennial in its duration as any tree. The tuber familiarly known as the potato bears an exact resem- blance to, and is essentially of the same nature with, the yearly shoot or stem of a tree. It is, in fact, an underground stem, consisting of a layer of bark, and a layer of woody tissue, enclosing a mass of pith, and furnished with buds. This underground stem, when planted in spring, sends out from each of its buds a growth which has a stem (under- ground), and leaves and flowers, and forms buds and seed, structures which are exact counterparts of those composing the growths issuing from the buds of trees. Does any one doubt that the annual potato-growths constitute perfect and