Part 12

Thank you, dear father, you always like to give me a treat, and this is a rare one, too. But I am sure that such a tree as this could never grow like a vegetable Gum tree, that you were telling me all about.

Can you name any plants, Willie, of which the fern tree puts you in mind?

I know of none, unless it be the Bamboo, for that is hard outside and hollow within, and it seems, like this, to grow up straight about the same thickness throughout.

There is another tree of this character which we have in Australia, some kinds of which grow in other countries, producing dates, of which boys are so fond.

Any one can guess that:--it is the Palm. But whence have we Palms, father?

There are some in Gipps’ Land, at the foot of the Australian Alps; other finer ones are at Illawarra, south of Sydney; but more northerly, in the hotter parts, Palms are very common.

Is that one from which we get our Cabbage Tree Hats?

It is so. The head of the Cabbage Palm is so good tasting and nourishing, that many trees were felled on purpose to get at this sort of cabbage, especially in the early days of the New South Wales Colony.

Then Palms, and Bamboo, and Fern trees grow the same way, as their stems look the same, and as they have neither branches nor solid timber. But how do they grow, father? There is no new wood formed outside the last ring, as in the Gum tree.

It so happens, my boy, that new layers are formed for a while, inside instead of outside. Our new class of trees are, therefore, called Endogenous, from their growing internally, in opposition to the ordinary forest trees, which are Exogenous, from growing externally.

I suppose the new shoots arise from where we see the joints in the cane; but where is the fruit of our new Endogenous friend?

Have you never seen the pictures of bunches of dates and other fruits all among the leafy branches at the top?

Eh! that I have, with the figures of Blacks climbing up the long poles to get at the fruit.

Now I have two more hard words for you to learn, to distinguish our two sorts of trees. We know them not merely by the difference of wood, but of seed. First tell me how many cotyledons or lobes are in a seed?

There are two in all the seeds that ever I saw.

What! was that cocoa nut the same which you bought the other day?

No, that was all in one piece.

True, Willie; and you may recollect something about a date stone.

I do, indeed; that was single also. I see I must not be so sure another time about what I know. Now I understand. Our new friends of the hard shell stems, which bear fruit at all, have seeds of one piece instead of two.

Quite so. Now a plant of one cotyledon in its seed, is said to be Monocotyledonous, while that having two lobes is Dicotyledonous; mono meaning one, and di, two.

Then my Gum tree, and Rose tree, and Sweet Pea, are all Dicotyledonous; but the nice Date Palm, the pretty Orchis, and the sweet Cocoa-nut, are Monocotyledonous. But are there any plants which are neither one nor the other?

There are some whose seeds are not to be distinguished, and are known as Acotyledonous, or without cotyledons. Can you not name one?

I don’t know, unless you mean such as the Ferns, the Mosses, and the Lichens on the rocks or decaying timber.

They are the very ones. We have now had examples of the three great varieties of vegetation; Monocotyledonous, having one lobe to the seed; Dicotyledonous, having two lobes; and Acotyledonous, without any.

Will you now, dear father, explain the way in which the Monocotyledonous plants differ from the Dicotyledonous, especially in their system of growth?

I will, my boy, and we will begin this time with the seed.

Any one can tell where the plumula and rostellum of the Cocoa-nut proceed, for we can see the two places in the shell, one at the top and the other at the bottom. But do tell me what the white of the Cocoa-nut is?

That sweet substance is the Albumen, to nourish the young embryo inside. In most Monocotyledonous seeds, there is a lot of this albumen--which is thus chemically changed to suit for food. In the Date Palm this store-house is very hard, as you well know.