. Principles of plant culture : an elementary treatise designed as a text-book for beginners in agriculture and horticulture. Horticulture; Botany. The Plantlet. 41 59. No Food can be formed Without Chlorophyll. B3' the agency of chlorophyll, the chlorophyll bodies absorb energy in the form of light. This energy the chlorophyll body uses to take to pieces the carbonic acid, mineral salts and water absorbed from the air and the soil, and to recom- bine them into foods of various kinds which can be used by the protoplasm in making new parts and in repairing waste. This process is known as Assimi
. Principles of plant culture : an elementary treatise designed as a text-book for beginners in agriculture and horticulture. Horticulture; Botany. The Plantlet. 41 59. No Food can be formed Without Chlorophyll. B3' the agency of chlorophyll, the chlorophyll bodies absorb energy in the form of light. This energy the chlorophyll body uses to take to pieces the carbonic acid, mineral salts and water absorbed from the air and the soil, and to recom- bine them into foods of various kinds which can be used by the protoplasm in making new parts and in repairing waste. This process is known as Assimilation (as-sim'-i-la'-tion). Until assimilation commences, no new plant substance has been formed. It is true that new cell-walls and new pro- toplasm may be formed from the food supply- of the seed before chlorophyll appears, but until chlorophyll is formed, and assimilation begins, the whole plantlet, with whatever remains of the seed, when dried, weighs no more than the seed weighed at the beginning. The material formed by assimilation is starch, or some substance of similar compo- sition (sugar or oil), which, after undergoing chemical changes, if need be to render it soluble, is distributed to other parts of the plant to be built up into cell-walls and protoplasm, or to be held as reserve food (14). Only plants can assimilate food from mineral substances. The food of ani- mals must all have been first assimilated by plants. 60. The Sources of Plant Food. By observing plantlets of the bean or pumpkin a few days after germination, we may discover that the cotyledons, fig. 14. showing Btarcb which were at first so plump, have Shriv- •"'y^'^ls stored as reserye food in cell of potato. eled to a mere fraction of their former Highly magnified. size. This change is due to the fact that the food con- 3. 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
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