Disease in plantsWard, H. Marshall (Harry Marshall)
Science
Disease in plants
Ward, H. Marshall (Harry Marshall)
Plant diseases
As time went on, while the general truth of Sachs' views was confirmed,
a number of detailed discoveries were made which seemed to contradict
them in certain points. It was found that not all leaves form starch,
for some contain sugar or oil; but Holle and Godlewski proved
experimentally that this oil may be replaced by starch if the conditions
of assimilation are slightly modified. More recently Hébert discovered
that the stalks and leaves of grasses contain a peculiar form of gum,
which was formerly confounded with starch, a substance not abundant in
them. Then came Schimper's discovery of starch-forming corpuscles,
which, if supplied with sugar, are able to form starch-grains in the
dark, as in tubers, etc., underground; and as subsequent researches have
proved that the chlorophyll-corpuscles--which are morphologically the
same as the starch-forming corpuscles and can be replaced by them--are
also able to form starch-grains from sugar, as proved by the experiments
of Boehm, Acton, Meyer, Laurent, Bokorny, Saposchnikoff, and others, it
soon became evident that nothing essential needed altering in Sachs'
view that starch is the first visible product of carbon-dioxide
assimilation, only it became clearer that the starch-grains are built up
by the protoplasm from glucose or some similar body, and represent so
many packets of reserve materials put by for the present because not
required for the immediate needs of the cell.
Boussingault showed, about thirty years ago, that assimilation soon
stops in green leaves if cut off from the plant, not because the leaves
die, but owing to some "maximum capacity" being attained. Sachs had
shown that the starch passes down to other parts of the plant in
solution as glucose.
Neither time nor space will permit me to go into the enormous field of
research and results opened up by these and similar observations made
between 1860-70. It must suffice to say that they led to the discovery
and study of the diastatic and other enzymes in the leaves and other
green parts of plants, and to a clearer understanding of what was
already known of them in seeds, and this knowledge reacted at once on
our insight into the processes of transport of reserve materials and
constructive materials from one part of the plant to another, matters
which will be referred to later on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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