Botany; Geotropism; Plants -- Irritability and movements
Four radicles were allowed to grow downwards over plates of smoked
glass, inclined at 70° to the horizon, under the same conditions as in
the cases of Æsculus, Phaseolus, and Vicia. Facsimiles are here given
(Fig. 27) of two of these tracks; and a third short one was almost as
plainly serpentine as that at A. It was also manifest by a greater or
less amount of soot having been swept off the glasses, that the tips
had
pressed alternately with greater and less force on them. There must,
therefore, have been movement in at least two planes at right angles to
one another. These radicles were so delicate that they rarely had the
power to sweep the glasses quite clean. One of them had developed some
lateral or secondary rootlets, which projected a few degrees beneath
the horizon; and it is an important fact that three of them left
distinctly serpentine tracks on the smoked surface, showing beyond
doubt that they had circumnutated like the main or primary radicle. But
the tracks were so slight that they could not be traced and copied
after the smoked surface had been varnished.
Fig. 27. Cucurbita ovifera: tracks left by tips of radicles in growing
downwards over smoked glass-plates, inclined at 70° to the horizon.
Fig. 28. Cucurbita ovifera: circumnutation of arched hypocotyl at a
very early age, traced in darkness on a horizontal glass, from 8 A.M.
to 10.20 A.M. on the following day. The movement of the bead magnified
20 times, here reduced to one-half of original scale.
Fig. 29. Cucurbita ovifera: circumnutation of straight and vertical
hypocotyl, with filament fastened transversely across its upper end,
traced in darkness on a horizontal glass, from 8.30 A.M. to 8.30 P.M.
The movement of the terminal bead originally magnified about 18 times,
here only 4½ times.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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