Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/614

 594 PLANT PLANTAIN tlement however remote. Wars have had their effect upon vegetation, and the passage of an army through a country leaves weeds in its train which were not there before. Af- ter our civil war a little leguminous plant, Les- pedeza striata, sprang up all over the southern states ; it is not known how it came or where from, but its native country is Japan, and in some localities as "Japan clover" it is valued as a forage plant. In a geographical classifica- tion, plants may be arranged in zones as re- gards latitudes, or in zones as to altitudes ; or following Schonw, the globe may be divided into phyto-geographic regions founded upon the prevailing plants, such as the region of mosses and saxifrages, the region of palms and melastomas, &c. Besides these there are vast numbers of marine plants the distribution of which is marked by distinct bounds. The ac- companying chart is designed to present at one view the prevailing vegetation of the different parts of the globe, and to give an idea of the geographical limits of the principal cultivated and economical plants. Bibliography. In this sketch of the plant, only the leading points have been briefly treated, and some are necessarily omitted altogether. Naturalists are now much occupied in studying the relations of plants and insects, and the reader is referred for some account of these to the titles INSECT FERTILI- ZATION and INSECTIVOKOTJS PLANTS. Since the last named article was written, Sir John Lub- bock's work, "British Wild Flowers consider- ed in Relation to Insects" (London, 1875), has appeared, and gives many new observations. To aid those who would follow the subject of this article more in full, the following works are enumerated, as supplementary to the more extended list (mainly of systematic works) given under BOTANY. Plant structure and plant life are presented in a form attractive to young people by Prof. Asa Gray in " How Plants Grow" and "How Plants Behave" (New York, 1858 and 1872), and by Miss Eliza Youmans in her "First" and "Second Book of Botany" (New York, 1870-'73). The gen- eral reader will find Gray's "Lessons" (1868) sufficiently comprehensive, and his " Structural and Systematic Botany " is a thorough work suited to advanced students. The elaborate work of Le Maout and Decaisne, translated by Mrs. Hooker and edited by Dr. J. D. Hook- er under the title " A General System of Bot- any, Descriptive and Analytical" (1873), has been referred to as the most recent work on classification ; it is prefaced by a full and pro- fusely illustrated treatise on structure. The student who would study the physiology of plants and their relation to the soil will find in Prof. S. W. Johnson's " How Crops Grow " and " How Crops Feed " (New York, 1868 and 1870) the most complete presentation of the subject. The literature has recently been en- riched by a translation of Julius Sachs's Lehr- l)uch der Botanik, with the title " Text Book of Botany, Morphological and Physiological," by A. W. Bennett (London, 1875). The most complete work on the distribution of plants is A. de Candolle's Geographic botanique raison- nee (Paris, 1855). Darwin's "Origin of Spe- cies," " Variation of Plants and Animals un- der Domestication," "Fertilization of Orchids," and "Movements of Climbing Plants" are full of interest to the general reader and won- derful storehouses of facts for the student. PLANTAGENET, the surname of the royal fam- ily of England from Henry II. to Richard III. inclusive. It belonged originally to the house of Anjou, and by most antiquaries is derived from the story that Foulques or Fulk, the first earl of that family, having committed some crime, went on a pilgrimage to Rome, where he was scourged with broom twigs (planta- genistce), and from that circumstance assumed the name. It is now borne through collat- eral descent by the duke of Buckingham and Chandos. PLANTAIN. I. A genus (plantago) of hum- ble weed-like plants found nearly all over the globe, but most abundant in the temperate parts of the old world. It gives its name to the small family plantiginacece, which includes only two other genera. The plantains are stemless herbs with a tuft of spreading leaves, and in our species slender leafless flower stalks, upon which the whitish flowers are crowded in a small bracted spike or head; calyx with four sepals ; corolla small, with a narrow tube and four-parted border, withering on the pod ; sta- mens four (rarely two) ; pod two-celled, two- to several-seeded, and opening by a transverse line, the top falling away like a lid. The com- mon plantain, P. major, is found almost every- where around dwellings; its ovate or slightly heart-shaped leaves have five to seven strong ribs, and channelled petioles; its dense slen- der flower spikes are from 6 to 18 in. long, and are often placed in the cages of birds, which are very fond of the unripe and ripe seeds; the broad leaves have long had a popular rep- utation as a beneficial cooling application to bruises. This is one of the most thoroughly naturalized of all European weeds; it has fol- lowed the settler to the most remote parts, and is said to be called "the white man's foot" by the aborigines; a small and rough form grows in salt marshes. The native P. cordata, which resembles it somewhat, is rath- er rare along streams, especially southward. The rib grass, P. lanceolata, also called ripple grass, buckhorn, and English plantain, is an- other extensively introduced species, and is abundant in meadows. This has lanceolate, three- to five-ribbed leaves, which are 4 to 10 in. long, and usually hairy; the channelled flower stalk is 1 or 2 ft. high with a short spike, which is at first ovoid, but later usually becoming cylindric. Most animals, especially sheep, are fond of its mucilaginous leaves, and in England it was formerly cultivated as a fodder plant; even at the present time the catalogues of the English seedsmen include it