Fig. 25. Simple leaf with blade, leafstalk (petiole), and two stipules at the base. Margins of the leafblade serrate or saw-toothed. Fig. 26. Leaf with a sagittate base, or shaped like an arrowhead, the lobes pointing downward, and with entire margins. Fig. 27. Retuse or emarginate tip, somewhat indented. Fig. 28. With the base auriculate or with rounded basal lobes. Fig. 29. Hastate, like an arrowhead but the lobes pointing outward. Fig. 30. With cuneate base (wedge-shaped). Fig. 31. Cuspidate tip with a usually hard and stiff point. Fig. 32. Perfoliate, the leaf bases joined and the stem passing through them. Fig. 33. Truncate, the top flattened. Fig. 34. Pinnately lobed, with deep indentations cut toward the midrib. Fig. 35. Palmately lobed, out toward the top of the leafstalk.] The outline of leaves is as varied as nature itself. Some of the common kinds are shown in drawings (Figures 13-24), which tell more of the story than pages of description could do. Their margins, too, their tips, their bases (Figures 25-35), all parts of them, in fact, are so variable and yet in each kind of plant so uniform, that in the description of the plants of any region the botanist has used these characteristics of leaves as one method of identifying the particular plant in hand. The terms used to designate these different kinds of leaf margins or forms of blade are precise, nearly universally used, but need to be studied only by those who, because of special fondness for the subject, are likely to need them in using books which are beyond the scope of the present one. If, for instance, the reader is interested in finding out what his native roadside plants are, he would need a book describing them, and there are many for different parts of the country. In such books he would find these terms, which say so much in a single word (there are other sets of terms for flowers, fruits, and seeds) totally unfamiliar and quite likely to disgust him at the start. A little study may open up to him that most interesting and easily accessible of recreations, a first-hand familiarity with the wild flowers of one’s own neighborhood. All leaves are not as simple as the figures show them to be. In many the midrib or principal vein is much elongated and there are small _leaflets_, sometimes even scores of them, all fastened to a common stalk. Such are called _compound_ leaves (Figures 36-37), which may be found in ash, hickory, rosebushes, blackberries, peas, beans, and thousands of other plants. [Illustration: FIGS. 36-38.--COMPOUND AND PARALLEL-VEINED LEAVES Fig. 36. Palmately compound leaf, the five leaflets all arising from the tip of the common leafstalk. Fig. 37. Pinnately compound leaf, the leaflets arising from the sides of the common leafstalk. Fig 38. A parallel-veined leaf. All the other leaves figured are netted-veined.]