Botany; Geotropism; Plants -- Irritability and movements
Oxalis (Biophytum) sensitiva.—The cotyledons are highly remarkable from
the amplitude and rapidity of their movements during the day. The
angles at which they stood above or beneath the horizon were measured
at short intervals of time; and we regret that their course was not
traced during the whole day. We will give only a few of the
measurements, which were made whilst the seedlings were exposed to a
temperature of 22½° to 24½° C. One cotyledon rose 70° in 11 m.;
another, on a distinct seedling, fell 80° in 12 m. Immediately before
this latter fall the same cotyledon had risen from a vertically
downward to a vertically upward position in 1 h. 48 m., and had
therefore passed through 180° in under 2 h. We have met with no other
instance of a circumnutating movement of such great amplitude as 180°;
nor of such rapidity of movement as the passage through 80° in 12 m.
The cotyledons of this plant sleep at night by rising
vertically and coming into close contact. This upward movement differs
from one of the great diurnal oscillations above described only by the
position being permanent during the night and by its periodicity, as it
always commences late in the evening.
Tropaeolum minus (?) (var. Tom Thumb) (Tropaeoleae).—The cotyledons are
hypogean, or never rise above the ground. By removing the soil a buried
epicotyl or plumule was found, with its summit arched abruptly
downwards, like the arched hypocotyl of the cabbage previously
described. A glass filament with a bead at its end was affixed to the
basal half or leg, just above the hypogean cotyledons, which were again
almost surrounded by loose earth. The tracing (Fig. 16) shows the
course of the bead during 11 h. After the last dot given in the figure,
the bead moved to a great distance, and finally off the glass, in the
direction indicated by the broken line. This great movement, due to
increased growth along the concave surface of the arch, was caused by
the basal leg bending backwards from the upper part, that is in a
direction opposite to the dependent tip, in the same manner as occurred
with the hypocotyl of the cabbage. Another buried and arched epicotyl
was observed in the same manner, excepting that the two legs of the
arch were tied together with fine silk for the sake of preventing the
great movement just mentioned. It moved, however, in the evening in the
same direction as before, but the line followed was not so straight.
During the morning the tied arch moved in an irregularly circular,
strongly zigzag course, and to a greater distance than in the previous
case, as was shown in a tracing, magnified 18 times. The movements of a
young plant bearing a few leaves and of a mature plant, will hereafter
be described.
Fig. 16. Tropaeolum minus (?): circumnutation of buried and arched
epicotyl, traced on a horizontal glass, from 9.20 A.M. to 8.15 P.M.
Movement of bead of filament magnified 27 times.
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