Water-plants, called "pond-weeds," and grow on both fresh and salt
water. The marine species, Zostera marina, is dried and used for
stuffing mattresses.
[Illustration: Pond Weed.]
11. BUTOMACEÆ (Flowering Rushes).
Of this order the Butomas umbellatus, a sort of rush, producing very
handsome pink flowers in umbels, growing in ditches and by the sides
of rivers, is the most characteristic member.
[Illustration: Flowering Rush.]
12. ALISMACEÆ (Water Plantain).
The two chief members of this order are the Alisma Plantago or Water
Plantain, which grows in ditches, having its flowers in the form of
panicles, and the Sagittaria sagittæfolia or Arrowhead.
[Illustration: Water Plantain.]
* * * * *
The third great natural family of plants are the Exogenæ. They comprise
all the trees and shrubs of the temperate and colder regions, together
with many of the flowering plants. They are characterised by certain
peculiarities which can be at once recognised, such as the twisted and
branched form of the stem, the possession of bark, leaves having the
veins covering them running in all directions and forming a network,
and the seeds containing two cotyledons; the wood, moreover, is
deposited in rings (figs. 16, 17, 18, 19), one of which is formed every
year, by the new wood being produced on the outside of the old, and
between it and the bark. This deposition takes place as follows: after
the rains of winter and early spring have well saturated the earth with
moisture, and the warmth of spring has begun to penetrate to the roots
of the plants, a development of the points of each fibrile or radicle
takes place, forming new spongioles; these, being formed of new porous
cellular tissue, begin to absorb (by endosmose) the moisture of the
earth, which entering at all these thousands of minute spongioles at
once, collects and rises in the vessels of the trunk and branches, and
arriving at the vessels forming a plexis on the surface of every leaf,
begins to be changed by the action of the sun's rays, absorbing carbon
and giving out oxygen from the carbonic acid always contained in the
air. The sap which has thus risen is the juice of the earth in which
the plant grows, containing several earthy salts and vegetable extract
drawn from the manure or decaying vegetation contained in the mould,
together with carbonic acid dissolved in the fluid; this carbonic acid
is changed by the sun's rays as well as that which was contained in the
air, and the carbon uniting with the watery part of the sap, forms the
green substance before alluded to, called chlorophyll, which is the
green colouring matter of all plants, and is the basis of the wood.
The altered sap descends between the wood and the bark, and forms a
deposit gradually, which at the end of the year is a complete ring of
wood surrounding the wood of former years. This circulation of juices
continues through the summer, until, the cold weather coming on and the
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