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289 pages

English

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“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.

Sujets

Plant identification

Plant taxonomy

Botany

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Publié par	Read Books Ltd.
Date de parution	14 juillet 2020
Nombre de lectures	2
EAN13	9781528763356
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	9 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0350€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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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 la fran aise . 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

T HE K ING 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