Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/158

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OF THE STALK.

Articulatus, jointed, as in Agrostis alba, t. 1189, Aira canescens, t. 1190, Avena strigosa, t. 1266, and most other grasses;

Geniculatus, bent like the knee, as Alopecurus geniculatus, t. 1250.

It is either solid or hollow, round or triangular, rough or smooth, sometimes hairy or downy, scarcely woolly. I know of no instance of such a scaly culm as Linnæus has figured in his Philosophia Botanica, t. 4, f. 111, nor can I conceive what he had in view.


3. Scapus. A Stalk, springs from the Root, and bears the flowers and fruit, but not the leaves. Primula vulgaris, the Primrose, Engl. Bot. t. 4, and P. veris, the Cowslip, t. 5, are examples of it. In the former the stalk is simple and single-flowered; in the latter subdivided and many-flowered. It is either naked, as in Narcissus, Engl. Bot. t. 17, or scaly, as in Tussilago Farfara, t. 429. In others of this last genus, t. 430 and 431, the