Botany; Geotropism; Plants -- Irritability and movements
We next experimented on nearly a score of radicles by allowing them to
grow downwards over inclined plates of smoked glass, in exactly the
same manner as with Æsculus and Phaseolus. Some of the plates were
inclined only a few degrees beneath the horizon, but most of them
between 60° and 75°. In the latter cases the radicles in growing
downwards were deflected only a little from the direction which they
had followed whilst germinating in sawdust, and they pressed lightly on
the glass-plates (Fig. 21). Five of the most distinct tracks are here
copied, and they are all slightly sinuous, showing circumnutation.
Moreover, a close examination of almost every one of the tracks clearly
showed that the tips in their downward course had alternately pressed
with greater or less force on the plates, and had sometimes risen up so
as nearly to leave them for short intervals. The distance between the
extreme right and left positions of the radicle A was 0.7 mm.,
ascertained in the same manner as in the case of Phaseolus.
Epicotyl.—At the point where the radicle had protruded from a bean laid
on its side, a flattened solid lump projected .1 of an inch, in the
same horizontal plane with the bean. This protuberance consisted of the
convex summit of the arched epicotyl; and as it became developed the
two legs of the arch curved themselves laterally upwards, owing to
apogeotropism, at such a rate that the arch stood highly inclined after
14 h., and vertically in 48 h. A filament was fixed to the crown of the
protuberance before any arch was visible, but the basal half grew so
quickly that on the second morning the end of the filament was bowed
greatly downwards. It was therefore removed and fixed lower down. The
line traced during these two days extended in the same general
direction, and was in parts nearly straight, and in others plainly
zigzag, thus giving some evidence of circumnutation.
As the arched epicotyl, in whatever position it may be placed, bends
quickly upwards through apogeotropism, and as the two legs tend at a
very early age to separate from one another, as soon as they are
relieved from the pressure of the surrounding earth, it was difficult
to ascertain positively whether the epicotyl, whilst remaining arched,
circumnutated. Therefore some rather deeply buried beans were
uncovered, and the two legs of the arches were tied together, as had
been done with the epicotyl of Tropaeolum and the hypocotyl of the
Cabbage. The movements of the tied arches were traced in the usual
manner on
two occasions during three days. But the tracings made under such
unnatural conditions are not worth giving; and it need only be said
that the lines were decidedly zigzag, and that small loops were
occasionally formed. We may therefore conclude that the epicotyl
circumnutates whilst still arched and before it has grown tall enough
to break through the surface of the ground.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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