Plant Names And Definitions—

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29145, 4 March 1960, Page 7

Plant Names And Definitions—

The knowledge of plant names and definitions with the average man or woman is extremely elementary, if it exists at all, and it seems likely to remain so. Most persons are content to grow their flowers and vegetables well, without delving into horticultural terms and scientific definitions any more deeply than is necessary to achieve this end. Perhaps they cannot be blamed for this; but one’s gardening can become more interesting and even more rewarding when there is an understanding of the scientific terms for the everyday things which the gardener is handling throughout the year. Almost before you’ve begun gardening, you are likely to run up against terms like annuals, perennials, fruit, tree, bulb and tuber. They appear with almost monotonous regularity in these notes week by week, as well ast in every handbook on gardening you are likely to come across. And yet, are you quite sure you know the meaning of any one of them? They are all definite terms which are not hard to sort out and remember.

For instance, take the definition of “fruit.” It is: “That which contains the seed within itself.” Thus we have the definition to include not only stone fruits, pip fruits, raspberries strawberries and walnuts, but also tomato, cucumber, pumpkin and marrow, which are generally, though wrongly, classed by most as vegetables. If you are seeking the exception to prove the rule, it will be found in the pineapple, which, although generally regarded as a fruit, carries no seed within it, and therefore cannot meet the requirements of our definition.

An annual is a plant which

grows, flowers and matures its seed within a year and then dies, while a perennial has a continuous life over a period of years. A tuber like a bulb, is a form of swelling which different plants have evolved as a device for storing energy during their dormant periods; but, while the tuber is formed by the swelling of a branch as in the potato or by a swollen root, as in the case of the dahlia, the bulb such as that of the narcissus and the onion is a swelling of the leaf base to form a sheath round the embryo flower within, already perfect and complete in all its parts. A tuber may be divided

for replanting into as many pieces as there are eyes.

A tree has one main stem with branches springing from it, but a shrub can have many branches springing from the main root. All plant names are fixed by botanical classification, and are divided into compartments order, species, variety so that all these points, when correctly arranged, make a pattern which it is not hard to understand and work to. The naming of plants is similarly effected on flower and structure, with the right of anyone to name a new variety as they may think fit, leaving it to world authorities to establish the fundamental botanical structure.