Life Movements in Plants, Volume IBose, Jagadis Chandra
Science
Life Movements in Plants, Volume I
Bose, Jagadis Chandra
Growth (Plants); Plants -- Irritability and movements
For the restoration of sensitiveness, and to meet working conditions,
the lower end of the cut stem is mounted on a T-tube, with
funnel-attachment and exit-tube, as shown in Fig. 30. The other two cut
ends--of the stem and of the petiole--may be covered with moist cloth
or may be closed with collodion flexile to prevent rapid evaporation
and drying up of the specimen. A slight hydrostatic pressure maintains
the specimen in a moderately turgid condition. A preparation thus
made is insensitive at the beginning, but if left undisturbed it
slowly recovers its excitability. The history of the depression of
excitability after shock of preparation and its gradual restoration
is graphically illustrated by a series of records made by the plant
(Fig. 31).
The petiole-pulvinus preparation thus made offers all facilities for
experiment. Owing to its small size it can be easily manipulated; it
can be enclosed in a small chamber and subjected to varying conditions
of temperature and to the action of different vapours and gases. Drugs
are easily absorbed at the cut end, and poison and its antidote can
be successively applied through the funnel without any disturbance
of the continuity of record. In fact, many experiments which would
be impossible with the entire plant are quite practicable with the
isolated leaf.
The arrangement for taking records of response is seen in Fig. 30,
which is reproduced from a photograph of the actual apparatus. For
recording the response and recovery of the leaf under stimulation,
I use my Resonant Recorder fully described in the ‘Philosophical
Transactions’ (1913). The petiole is attached to one arm of the
horizontal lever. The writer, made of fine steel wire with a bent tip,
is at right angles to the lever, and is maintained by electromagnetic
means in a state of to-and-fro vibration, say, ten times in a second.
The record, consisting of a series of dots, is free from errors arising
from friction of continuous contact of the writer with the recording
surface. The successive dots in the record at definite intervals of a
tenth of a second also give the time-relations of the response curve.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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