Grasses : $b A handbook for use in the field and laboratoryWard, H. Marshall (Harry Marshall)
Science
Grasses : $b A handbook for use in the field and laboratory
Ward, H. Marshall (Harry Marshall)
Grasses
Güntz points out that xerophilous grasses are apt to have upright,
narrow (Figs. 26-28), grooved or folded leaves, with strong cuticle,
and marked motor-cells when the leaves open. It is in grasses of
this kind, especially such as inhabit dry sandy districts, that the
subulate, solid or grooved leaves shown in Figures 18, 19 occur--e.g.
_Festuca ovina_ and its varieties, _Aira flexuosa_, _Nardus stricta_,
&c. The epidermal cell-walls are sinuous, the stomata protected--e.g.
on the flanks of ribs and in grooves--and waxy or hairy coverings
occur. Colourless water-storing cells are apt to occur between or
around the vascular bundles, and the chlorophyll-tissues tend to
be dense and well protected inside the leaf: strongly developed
bast-sclerenchyma is also frequent (Fig. 18).
In shade-grasses, on the other hand, and in hygrophilous species, the
leaves are as a rule flat, with thin epidermal cell-walls, which have
plane sides, free stomata, and no wax &c. Water-storing tissue (apart
from tropical species) is sparse or absent, and the chlorophyll-tissues
have well aerated lacunar spaces. Bast-sclerenchyma is in these cases
feebly developed.
In the following chapter I have brought together some of the principal
anatomical features, in such form that the characters can be employed
in checking other determinations of grass leaves. The results, which
are based on the elaborate investigations of Duval Jouve, Schroeter,
Pée-Laby and Grob, as well as on my own observations, are not complete
in all respects, and much more should be done to extend the theme, but
the account given will serve to show the student how such results may
be employed. It is as yet impossible to decide how far these characters
are constant--they are known to be fairly so in many cases--but several
grasses cannot yet be distinguished by them alone.
[Illustration: Fig. 28. Transverse section of subulate leaf of _Aira
flexuosa_ (× about 50), the upper surface represented by a mere ridge
with two flanking grooves each with but traces of motor-cells below.
One large vascular bundle and four much smaller ones are seen. There
are no girders, but slender bands of sclerenchyma at the lower surface
nearly join into a continuous sub-epidermal sheath. This type is the
extreme form of that in Fig. 26.]
It should also be added that some grasses develope two types of leaves
(heterophylly), solid or subulate below, flat or slightly inrolled
above--e.g. _Festuca heterophylla_--and the following arrangement is
intended to apply to the vegetative lower leaves and not to those on
the upper parts of the flowering specimen. Moreover the sections should
be cut from the basal third of the lamina, and not from the tip of the
leaf.
CHAPTER V.
GRASSES CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO THE ANATOMICAL CHARACTERS OF THE LEAF.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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