Vegetable Teratology: An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants

How it begins

As full details relating to the disposition or arrangement of the general organs of flowering plants are given in all the ordinary text-books, it is only necessary in this place to allude to the main facts at present known, and which serve as the standard of comparison with which all morphological changes are compared. Even in the case of the roots, which appear to be very irregular in their ramification, it has been found that, in the first instance at least, the rootlets or fibrils are arranged in regular order one over another, in a certain determinate number of vertical ranks, generally either in two or in four, sometimes in three or in five series.