Plant Families - How To Know Them

By H. E. Jaques

“Plant Families – How To Know Them” is a 1948 guide to identifying plants by H. E. Jaques. It aims to teach the reader how to readily attribute any and every plant they see to its proper family, as well as to provide them with a general understanding of the characteristics of said family of trees. This accessible and profusely-illustrated guide will appeal to nature lovers and is not to be missed by those with a keen interest in gardening. Contents include: “Some Plant Facts”, “A List of Reference Books”, “How to Use the Keys”, “Pictured-Keys for Identification of the Families of Plants”, “Algae”, “Lichens”, “Mosses and Liverworts”, “Ferns”, “Flowering Plants”, “A List of the Families of Plants in Their Logical Order”, and “Index and Illustrated Glossary”. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new introduction on the history of gardening.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lowe Press
• Release date: Jul 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528763356

Book preview

PLANT FAMILIES

How To Know Them

Pictured-Keys for determining the families on nearly all of the members of the entire Plant Kingdom.

by

H. E. JAQUES

Professor of Biology

Lowa Wesleyan College

Second Edition

Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

A Short History of Gardening

Gardening is the practice of growing and cultivating plants as part of horticulture more broadly. In most domestic gardens, there are two main sets of plants; ‘ornamental plants’, grown for their flowers, foliage or overall appearance – and ‘useful plants’ such as root vegetables, leaf vegetables, fruits and herbs, grown for consumption or other uses. For many people, gardening is an incredibly relaxing and rewarding pastime, ranging from caring for large fruit orchards to residential yards including lawns, foundation plantings or flora in simple containers. Gardening is separated from farming or forestry more broadly in that it tends to be much more labour-intensive; involving active participation in the growing of plants.

Home-gardening has an incredibly long history, rooted in the ‘forest gardening’ practices of prehistoric times. In the gradual process of families improving their immediate environment, useful tree and vine species were identified, protected and improved whilst undesirable species were eliminated. Eventually foreign species were also selected and incorporated into the ‘gardens.’ It was only after the emergence of the first civilisations that wealthy individuals began to create gardens for aesthetic purposes. Egyptian tomb paintings from around 1500 BC provide some of the earliest physical evidence of ornamental horticulture and landscape design; depicting lotus ponds surrounded by symmetrical rows of acacias and palms. A notable example of an ancient ornamental garden was the ‘Hanging Gardens of Babylon’ – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Ancient Rome had dozens of great gardens, and Roman estates tended to be laid out with hedges and vines and contained a wide variety of flowers – acanthus, cornflowers, crocus, cyclamen, hyacinth, iris, ivy, lavender, lilies, myrtle, narcissus, poppy, rosemary and violets as well as statues and sculptures. Flower beds were also popular in the courtyards of rich Romans. The Middle Ages represented a period of decline for gardens with aesthetic purposes however. After the fall of Rome gardening was done with the purpose of growing medicinal herbs and/or decorating church altars. It was mostly monasteries that carried on the tradition of garden design and horticultural techniques during the medieval period in Europe. By the late thirteenth century, rich Europeans began to grow gardens for leisure as well as for medicinal herbs and vegetables. They generally surrounded them with walls – hence, the ‘walled garden.’

These gardens advanced by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries into symmetrical, proportioned and balanced designs with a more classical appearance. Gardens in the renaissance were adorned with sculptures (in a nod to Roman heritage), topiary and fountains. These fountains often contained ‘water jokes’ – hidden cascades which suddenly soaked visitors. The most famous fountains of this kind were found in the Villa d’Este (1550-1572) at Tivoli near Rome. By the late seventeenth century, European gardeners had started planting new flowers such as tulips, marigolds and sunflowers.

These highly complex designs, largely created by the aristocracy slowly gave way to the individual gardener however – and this is where this book comes in! Cottage Gardens first emerged during the Elizabethan times, originally created by poorer workers to provide themselves with food and herbs, with flowers planted amongst them for decoration. Farm workers were generally provided with cottages set in a small garden—about an acre—where they could grow food, keep pigs, chickens and often bees; the latter necessitating the planting of decorative pollen flora. By Elizabethan times there was more prosperity, and thus more room to grow flowers. Most of the early cottage garden flowers would have had practical uses though—violets were spread on the floor (for their pleasant scent and keeping out vermin); calendulas and primroses were both attractive and used in cooking. Others, such as sweet william and hollyhocks were grown entirely for their beauty.

Here lies the roots of today’s home-gardener; further influenced by the ‘new style’ in eighteenth century England which replaced the more formal, symmetrical ‘Garden à la française’. Such gardens, close to works of art, were often inspired by paintings in the classical style of landscapes by Claude Lorraine and Nicolas Poussin. The work of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, described as ‘England’s greatest gardener’ was particularly influential. We hope that the reader is inspired by this book, and the long and varied history of gardening itself, to experiment with some home-gardening of their own. Enjoy.

INTRODUCTION

WHEN life and living things are considered, nothing else is so basic as the plants. All other life is directly or indirectly dependent upon the green plants for sustenance. An intimate knowledge of plants is necessary for many vocational fields. Culture demands some knowledge of plants. Everyone may find interest and relaxation in studying or associating with them.

The total number of plants known to science is so great that a lifetime would scarcely suffice for one to learn to recognize all of them. The family, which is an aggregation of similar plants, makes a unit highly important for study. The number of families in the plant kingdom is sufficiently small that with a reasonable amount of study one can place most of the plants he sees anywhere in their proper relationship and understand them much better. In our judgment, no other division offers as good possibilities for a broad general understanding of plants and animals as the family group. It is for this reason that this book has been written.

The Pictured-Key Nature Books are not based on new research. The effort instead has been to take the important facts of plants and animals and to make them more understandable for the beginner and all students who appreciate clarity. In Plant Families all groups of plants have been considered and one or more plants used as examples of each family. Species of plants commonly seen have been chosen wherever possible for these examples. Some families of small consequence have been purposely omitted in the interests of making the keys easier to handle. With such a large field to cover, space has not permitted much to be said about any one plant. When the student finds himself especially interested in some particular group of plants, he will need to refer to one of the many excellent books on the group of his choice.

Many good friends have helped us. Professor Henry S. Conard of Grinnell College, whose studies of Mosses are well known, has written the keys for the entire division Bryophyta. Arlene Knies, Mabel Jaques Cuthbert, Francesca Jaques Stoner and our good neighbor, Betty Laird Swafford have made most of the drawings. It’s grand to have faithful friends; we want to thank them all.

In this revised edition a good number of changes have been made to the illustrations and text, and the entire book set in new format.

Mt. Pleasant, Iowa,

March 1, 1948.

CONTENTS

Some Plant Facts

A List of Reference Books

How to Use the Keys

Pictured-Keys for Identification of the Families of Plants

Algae

Lichens

Fungi

Mosses and Liverworts

Ferns

Flowering Plants

A List of the Families of Plants in their Logical Order

Index and Illustrated Glossary

SOME PLANT FACTS

THE KING was in his counting house, counting out his money. Kings have not always given their first attention to the welfare of their subjects.

Man is king of all the animals. He writes the books and says so. But there are no plants which publish claims to authority, so it may be a question just which one heads up the Plant Kingdom.

That doesn’t matter anyway for his subjects really count for more than a king. In this case there are 250,000 different kinds of subjects, but no one has ever tried to even guess how many individuals.

We took a census once of just the trees growing in Mt. Pleasant,—an unusually nice little town. They added up 15,998 individual trees. We would have been crazy, of course, to have attempted to count the dandelions or the grass plants, or the bacteria.

So much for random thoughts. Since there are some important things that should be said about plants, we’ll get on to a few of them.

PLANT REQUIREMENTS

Moisture, an acceptable temperature, and for most plants, soil and sunlight are necessary for their growth. Where all of these conditions prevail in highly satisfactory degrees, plants are most abundant and at their best. In moist tropical areas plants if left to themselves grow into the nearly impenetrable jungle. Once the jungle growth is removed and such an area set with useful plants, the yield may be prodigious.

Temperate regions for part of the year are too cold or may have such limited rainfall as to support only a fair plant coverage. Deserts have everything else, yet grow but little for want of moisture. The seas have the moisture and usually the food materials and sufficient warmth. In their upper strata the water courses often produce a prolific plant growth but fail at greater depths through being unable to meet the light requirement. As the poles are approached, temperature becomes the limiting factor and plant life while present, is greatly reduced in size and in numbers of species and of individuals.

SOME EARLY PLANTS

Plants are age-old. Even at the dawn of the Cambrian period — some would say nearly a billion years ago — many of the simpler plants had made a good start. Ferns have been on the way perhaps half a billion years while flowering plants have likely been beautifying the world with their blossoms and fragrance for more than fifty million years. Plant styles have undergone many changes through these long ages and numerous species have flourished for a time and then become extinct. Abundant fossil remains reveal vegetation growths that in some ways greatly out-stripped the best we know today.

PLANT FREEDOM

The green plants live an independent life. With the sunlight for a motive force, they combine the carbon dioxide of the air with water to form much of their tissues. With a few more elements taken from the soil, they are self sufficient.

Other great groups of plants have been on relief so long as to lose their chance of independence. Now with their chlorophyll gone, they must live as parasites or saphophytes and like all the animals, are directly or indirectly dependent upon the green plants for food. The green plants then become king of all living things.

LARGE AND SMALL PLANTS

Plants on the whole display a wide range of sizes. Some bacteria are so small that more than six thousand billion would be required to fill a cubic inch of space. At the other extreme, vines occasionally exceed a length of one thousand feet. Now and then a tree may be over 300 feet high with a trunk more than 30 feet in diameter. One tiny bacterium would have about the same size ratio to the big tree as a well fed house-mouse would have to the entire earth and all that is in it.

PLANT PROJECTS

The best way to know and understand plants is to live with them. For the student, some collecting or research project if thoughtfully pursued is sure to pay well in pleasure and knowledge. How to Know the Trees suggests 26 tree study projects (p. 12) while in Living Things—How to Know Them a chapter is entitled More than 100 Suggestions for Nature Study Projects (p. 3 - Rev. Ed.). These offer many good suggestions to which the ingenious teacher or student can readily add other helpful ones.

COMMON VS. SCIENTIFIC NAMES

Plants that have common everyday uses or relationships are known by common names. In fact, many of them have several common names and that is how the trouble begins. For instance, Abutilon theophrasti, a widely distributed and all too abundant Asiatic weed, is referred to by the following, Velvet Leaf, Indian Mallow, Butter-print, Button-weed, Pie-print, Mormon-weed, Cotton-weed, Indian Hemp, Sheep-weed, American Jute, Pie Marker, etc. If a plant is cosmopolitan each language may also have one or more names for it.

To make the confusion still worse the same name is frequently applied to several different plants, leaving the hearer in doubt as to which one is meant.

To ease this difficulty, Linnaeus, a Swedish naturalist around 1760, devised a system of scientific names which would be world wide in their application. He did such a good job that his scheme is still in use, and while it is not perfect the plan of having one universal scientific name for each plant has many advantages over common names.

Some violets are yellow, some purple, some white; some are large, others are small; the leaves are sometimes deeply cut and some are not cut at all. There are so many differences among the violets that many kinds (species is a better word) are recognized. All of these are enough alike in some essential characters that they are unmistakably related. Each one shows its relationship to its group. Such an aggregation is known as a genus and is given in this case the name Viola which is the Latin word for violet. Just as the Smiths have their John, William and Mary, so there are Viola odorata, Viola pubescens, Viola pedata, Viola tricolor, and many others. These scientific names are made up of a Latin noun the genus. It is always capitalized. The word following is the species and is a Latin adjective modifying the generic noun or a noun in apposition with it. The species name often reveals some important characters of the plant. Thus the four voilets named above are respectively, very fra-frant, have hairy stems, have leaves resembling a bird’s foot, or are variously colored (pansy). The word or abbreviation following the species is the authority or author and tells what scientist proposed this scientific name. Zoologists have ruled that all species names begin with a small letter; some botanists prefer to follow that same plan. Scientific names are printed in Italic type, or underscored when written or when Italic type is not available.

A few basic plant facts have been quickly mentioned. There is much to be known about plants and many excellent books to tell it. The reader whether a beginner or one who has long loved plants is wished a continuing of happy experiences with these, our faithful friends.

SOME HELPFUL BOOKS

small book like Plant Families, at best, can present only a general view of the entire plant kingdom. If one becomes especially interested in any particular group of plants he will need to refer to books that specialize in his chosen field. Some highly useful ones are suggested below, but this