Abstract
THE author hopes that this little botany primer “may be the means of exciting an interest in the subject in the minds of the young.” He is a teacher, and should therefore know that a multitude of new names is the reverse of exciting to young students, yet this is how the definitions are crowded in on page 3: “They [certain leaves] are spoken of as radical leaves (Latin, radix, a root). Others are attached to the stem, and are described as cauline (Latin, caulis, a stem). The radical and lower cauline leaves possess a stalk, or, as it is called, a petiole. This attaches the flattened part, or blade, to the stem. The upper cauline leaves have no such stalk, the blade being immediately attached to the stem, or sessile.” And again on page 5: “Each of these is called a carpel, while the group of carpels is termed the pistil. Each carpel consists of a swollen portion, the ovary; on top of this there is a little head, the stigma.” This is all very well, and the language of botany must, of course, be learned at some stage or other; but, at the same time, the designations follow one another so closely, that the pupils who use the volume as a reading-book will get bewildered.
Botany for Beginners.
By Henry Edmonds Pp. 117. (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1896.)
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Botany for Beginners. Nature 54, 412 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/054412c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/054412c0