. Elements of botany. Botany; Botany. 44 ELEMENTS OP BOTANY. Perennial plants live for a series of years. Many kinds of trees last for centuries. The Californian giant redwoods, or Sequoias, which, reach a height of over 300 feet under favor- able circumstances, live nearly 2000 years ; and some mon- strous cypress trees found in Mexico were thought by Professor Asa Gray to be from 4000 to 6000 years old. 67. Stemless Plants. — The so- called stemless plants, like the dande- lion. Fig. 29, and some violets, are not really stemless at all, but send out their leaves and flowers from a very short
. Elements of botany. Botany; Botany. 44 ELEMENTS OP BOTANY. Perennial plants live for a series of years. Many kinds of trees last for centuries. The Californian giant redwoods, or Sequoias, which, reach a height of over 300 feet under favor- able circumstances, live nearly 2000 years ; and some mon- strous cypress trees found in Mexico were thought by Professor Asa Gray to be from 4000 to 6000 years old. 67. Stemless Plants. — The so- called stemless plants, like the dande- lion. Fig. 29, and some violets, are not really stemless at all, but send out their leaves and flowers from a very short stem which hardly rises at all above the surface of the ground. Now, as will be shown later (§ 241) plants live subject to a very fierce competition among themselves and exposed to almost constant attacks from animals. Any plant which can grow in safety under the very feet of grazing animals will be especially likely to make its way in the world, since there are many places where it can flourish while ordinary plants would be destroyed. The bitter, stemless dandelion, which is almost uneatable for most animals, unless cooked, which lies too near the earth to be fed upon by grazing animals, and which bears being trodden on with impu- nity, is a type of a large class of hardy weeds. And while plants with long stems find it to their account to reach up as far as possible into the sunlight, the cinquefoil,. Fig. 28. —Twigs and Branches of the Iliver Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Bergen, Joseph Y. (Joseph Young), 1851-1917. Boston, Ginn
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectbotany, bookyear1896
