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Proserpina: Studies Of Wayside Flowers, Volume 1, a non-fiction book by John Ruskin |
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Chapter 8. The Stem |
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_ CHAPTER VIII. THE STEM {127}
2. I suppose there is no question but that all nice people like hawthorn blossom. I want, if I can, to find out to-day, 25th May, 1875, what it is we like it so much for: holding these two branches of it in my hand--one full out, the other in youth. This full one is a mere mass of symmetrically balanced--snow, one was going vaguely to write, in the first impulse. But it is nothing of the sort. White,--yes, in a high degree; and pure, totally; but not at all dazzling in the white, nor pure in an insultingly rivalless manner, as snow would be; yet pure somehow, certainly; and white, absolutely, in spite of what might be thought failure,--imperfection--nay, even distress and loss in it. For every little rose of it has a green darkness in the centre--not even a pretty green, but a faded, yellowish, glutinous, unaccomplished green; and round that, all over the surface of the blossom, whose shell-like petals are themselves deep sunk, with grey shadows in the hollows of them--all above this already subdued brightness, are strewn the dark points of the dead stamens--manifest more and more, the longer one looks, as a kind of grey sand, sprinkled without sparing over what looked at first unspotted light. And in all the ways of it the lovely thing is more like the spring frock of some prudent little maid of fourteen, than a flower;--frock with some little spotty pattern on it to keep it from showing an unintended and inadvertent spot,--if Fate should ever inflict such a thing! Undeveloped, thinks Mr. Darwin,--the poor {129} short-coming, ill-blanched thorn blossom--going to be a Rose, some day soon; and, what next?--who knows?--perhaps a Paeony! 3. Then this next branch, in dawn and delight of youth, set with opening clusters of yet numerable blossom, four, and five, and seven, edged, and islanded, and ended, by the sharp leaves of freshest green, deepened under the flowers, and studded round with bosses, better than pearl beads of St. Agnes' rosary,--folded, over and over, with the edges of their little leaves pouting, as the very softest waves do on flat sand where one meets another; then opening just enough to show the violet colour within--which yet isn't violet colour, nor even "meno che le rose," but a different colour from every other lilac that one ever saw;--faint and faded even before it sees light, as the filmy cup opens over the depth of it, then broken into purple motes of tired bloom, fading into darkness, as the cup extends into the perfect rose. This, with all its sweet change that one would so fain stay, and soft effulgence of bud into softly falling flower, one has watched--how often; but always with the feeling that the blossoms are thrown over the green depth like white clouds--never with any idea of so much as asking what holds the cloud there. Have each of the innumerable blossoms a separate stalk? and, if so, how is it that one never thinks of the stalk, as one does with currants? 4. Turn the side of the branch to you;--Nature never meant you to see it so; but now it is all stalk below, and {130} stamens above,--the petals nothing, the stalks all tiny trees, always dividing their branches mainly into three--one in the centre short, and the two lateral, long, with an intermediate extremely long one, if needed, to fill a gap, so contriving that the flowers shall all be nearly at the same level, or at least surface of ball, like a guelder rose. But the cunning with which the tree conceals its structure till the blossom is fallen, and then--for a little while, we had best look no more at it, for it is all like grape-stalks with no grapes. These, whether carrying hawthorn blossom and haw, or grape blossom and grape, or peach blossom and peach, you will simply call the 'stalk,' whether of flower or fruit. A 'stalk' is essentially round, like a pillar; and has, for the most part, the power of first developing, and then shaking off, flower and fruit from its extremities. You can pull the peach from its stalk, the cherry, the grape. Always at some time of its existence, the flower-stalk lets fall something of what it sustained, petal or seed. In late Latin it is called 'petiolus,' the little foot; because the expanding piece that holds the grape, or olive, is a little like an animal's foot. Modern botanists have misapplied the word to the _leaf_-stalk, which has no resemblance to a foot at all. We must keep the word to its proper meaning, and, when we want to write Latin, call it 'petiolus;' when we want to write English, call it 'stalk,' meaning always fruit or flower stalk. {131} I cannot find when the word 'stalk' first appears in English:--its derivation will be given presently. 5. Gather next a hawthorn leaf. That also has a stalk; but you can't shake the leaf off it. It, and the leaf, are essentially one; for the sustaining fibre runs up into every ripple or jag of the leaf's edge: and its section is different from that of the flower-stalk; it is no more round, but has an upper and under surface, quite different from each other. It will be better, however, to take a larger leaf to examine this structure in. Cabbage, cauliflower, or rhubarb, would any of them be good, but don't grow wild in the luxuriance I want. So, if you please, we will take a leaf of burdock, (Arctium Lappa,) the principal business of that plant being clearly to grow leaves wherewith to adorn fore-grounds.[35] [Illustration: FIG. 13.] 6. The outline of it in Sowerby is not an intelligent one, and I have not time to draw it but in the rudest way myself; Fig. 13, _a_; with perspectives of the elementary form below, _b_, _c_, and d. By help of which, if you will construct a burdock leaf in paper, my rude outline (_a_) may tell the rest of what I want you to see. [Illustration: FIG. 14.] Take a sheet of stout note paper, Fig. 14, A, double it sharply down the centre, by the dotted line, then give it the two cuts at _a_ and _b_, and double those pieces sharply back, as at B; then, opening them again, cut the whole {132} into the form C; and then, pulling up the corners _c d_, stitch them together with a loose thread so that the points _c_ and _d_ shall be within half an inch of each other; and you will have a kind of triangular scoop, or shovel, with a stem, by which you can sufficiently hold it, D. 7. And from this easily constructed and tenable model, you may learn at once these following main facts about all leaves. {133} [I.] That they are not flat, but, however slightly, always hollowed into craters, or raised into hills, in one or another direction; so that any drawable outline of them does not in the least represent the real extent of their surfaces; and until you know how to draw a cup, or a mountain, rightly, you have no chance of drawing a leaf. My simple artist readers of long ago, when I told them to draw leaves, thought they could do them by the boughfull, whenever they liked. Alas, except by old William Hunt, and Burne Jones, I've not seen a leaf painted, since those burdocks of Turner's; far less sculptured--though one would think at first that was easier! Of which we shall have talk elsewhere; here I must go on to note fact number two, concerning leaves. {134} 8. [II.] The strength of their supporting stem consists not merely in the gathering together of all the fibres, but in gathering them essentially into the profile of the letter V, which you will see your doubled paper stem has; and of which you can feel the strength and use, in your hand, as you hold it. Gather a common plantain leaf, and look at the way it puts its round ribs together at the base, and you will understand the matter at once. The arrangement is modified and disguised in every possible way, according to the leaf's need: in the aspen, the leaf-stalk becomes an absolute vertical plank; and in the large trees is often almost rounded into the likeness of a fruit-stalk;--but, in all,[36] the essential structure is this doubled one; and in all, it opens at the place where the leaf joins the main stem, into a kind of cup, which holds next year's bud in the hollow of it. 9. Now there would be no inconvenience in your simply getting into the habit of calling the round petiol of the fruit the 'stalk,' and the contracted channel of the leaf, 'leaf-stalk.' But this way of naming them would not enforce, nor fasten in your mind, the difference between the two, so well as if you have an entirely different name for the leaf-stalk. Which is the more desirable, because the limiting character of the leaf, botanically, is--(I only learned this from my botanical friend the other day, just {135} in the very moment I wanted it,)--that it holds the bud of the new stem in its own hollow, but cannot itself grow in the hollow of anything else;--or, in botanical language, leaves are never axillary,--don't grow in armpits, but are themselves armpits; hollows, that is to say, where they spring from the main stem. 10. Now there is already a received and useful botanical word, 'cyme' (which we shall want in a little while.) derived from the Greek [Greek: kuma], a swelling or rising wave, and used to express a swelling cluster of foamy blossom. Connected with that word, but in a sort the reverse of it, you have the Greek '[Greek: kumbe],' the _hollow_ of a cup, or bowl; whence [Greek: kumbalou], a cymbal,--that is to say, a musical instrument owing its tone to its _hollowness_. These words become in Latin, cymba, and cymbalum; and I think you will find it entirely convenient and advantageous to call the leaf-stalk distinctively the 'cymba,' retaining the mingled idea of cup and boat, with respect at least to the part of it that holds the bud; and understanding that it gathers itself into a V-shaped, or even narrowly vertical, section, as a boat narrows to its bow, for strength to sustain the leaf. With this word you may learn the Virgilian line, that shows the final use of iron--or iron-darkened--ships: "Et ferruginea subvectat corpora cymba." The "subvectat corpora" will serve to remind you of the office of the leafy cymba in carrying the bud; and make {136} you thankful that the said leafy vase is not of iron; and is a ship of Life instead of Death. 11. Already, not once, nor twice, I have had to use the word 'stem,' of the main round branch from which both stalk and cymba spring. This word you had better keep for all growing, or advancing, shoots of trees, whether from the ground, or from central trunks and branches. I regret that the words multiply on us; but each that I permit myself to use has its own proper thought or idea to express, as you will presently perceive; so that true knowledge multiplies with true words. 12. The 'stem,' you are to say, then, when you mean the _advancing_ shoot,--which lengthens annually, while a stalk ends every year in a blossom, and a cymba in a leaf. A stem is essentially round,[37] square, or regularly polygonal; though, as a cymba may become exceptionally round, a stem may become exceptionally flat, or even mimic the shape of a leaf. Indeed I should have liked to write "a stem is essentially round, and constructively, on occasion, square,"--but it would have been too grand. The fact is, however, that a stem is really a roundly minded thing, throwing off its branches in circles as a trundled mop throws off drops, though it can always order the branches to fly off in what order it likes,--two at a time, opposite to each other; or three, or five, in a spiral coil; or one here and one there, on this side and that; {137} but it is always twisting, in its own inner mind and force; hence it is especially proper to use the word 'stem' of it--[Greek: stemma], a twined wreath; properly, twined round a staff, or sceptre: therefore, learn at once by heart these lines in the opening Iliad:
"Now, by this sacred sceptre hear me swear
14. Returning to our present business of nomenclature, we find the Greek word, 'stemma,' adopted by the Latins, {139} becoming the expression of a growing and hereditary race; and the branched tree, the natural type, among all nations, of multiplied families. Hence the entire fitness of the word for our present purposes; as signifying, "a spiral shoot extending itself by branches." But since, unless it is spiral, it is not a stem, and unless it has branches, it is not a stem, we shall still want another word for the sustaining 'sceptre' of a foxglove, or cowslip. Before determining that, however, we must see what need there may be of one familiar to our ears until lately, although now, I understand, falling into disuse. 15. By our definition, a stem is a spirally bent, essentially living and growing, shoot of vegetation. But the branch of a tree, in which many such stems have their origin, is not, except in a very subtle and partial way, spiral; nor, except in the shoots that spring from it, progressive forwards; it only receives increase of thickness at its sides. Much more, what used to be called the _trunk_ of a tree, in which many branches are united, has ceased to be, except in mere tendency and temper, spiral; and has so far ceased from growing as to be often in a state of decay in its interior, while the external layers are still in serviceable strength. 16. If, however, a trunk were only to be defined as an arrested stem, or a cluster of arrested stems, we might perhaps refuse, in scientific use, the popular word. But such a definition does not touch the main idea. Branches usually begin to assert themselves at a height above the {140} ground approximately fixed for each species of tree,--low in an oak, high in a stone pine; but, in both, marked as a point of _structural change in the direction of growing force_, like the spring of a vault from a pillar; and as the tree grows old, some of its branches getting torn away by winds or falling under the weight of their own fruit, or load of snow, or by natural decay, there remains literally a 'truncated' mass of timber, still bearing irregular branches here and there, but inevitably suggestive of resemblance to a human body, after the loss of some of its limbs. And to prepare trees for their practical service, what age and storm only do partially, the first rough process of human art does completely. The branches are lopped away, leaving literally the 'truncus' as the part of the tree out of which log and rafter can be cut. And in many trees, it would appear to be the chief end of their being to produce this part of their body on a grand scale, and of noble substance; so that, while in thinking of vegetable life without reference to its use to men or animals, we should rightly say that the essence of it was in leaf and flower--not in trunk or fruit; yet for the sake of animals, we find that some plants, like the vine, are apparently meant chiefly to produce fruit; others, like laurels, chiefly to produce leaves; others chiefly to produce flowers; and others to produce permanently serviceable and sculptural wood; or, in some cases, merely picturesque and monumental masses of vegetable rock, "intertwisted {141} fibres serpentine,"--of far nobler and more pathetic use in their places, and their enduring age, than ever they could be for material purpose in human habitation. For this central mass of the vegetable organism, then, the English word 'trunk' and French 'tronc' are always in accurate scholarship to be retained--meaning the part of a tree which remains when its branches are lopped away. 17. We have now got distinct ideas of four different kinds of stem, and simple names for them in Latin and English,--Petiolus, Cymba, Stemma, and Truncus; Stalk, Leaf-stalk, Stem, and Trunk; and these are all that we shall commonly need. There is, however, one more that will be sometimes necessary, though it is ugly and difficult to pronounce, and must be as little used as we can. And here I must ask you to learn with me a little piece of Roman history. I say, to _learn_ with me, because I don't know any Roman history except the two first books of Livy, and little bits here and there of the following six or seven. I only just know enough about it to be able to make out the bearings and meaning of any fact that I now learn. The greater number of modern historians know, (if honest enough even for that,) the facts, or something that may possibly be like the facts, but haven't the least notion of the meaning of them. So that, though I have to find out everything that I want in Smith's dictionary, like any schoolboy, I can usually tell you the {142} significance of what I so find, better than perhaps even Mr. Smith himself could. 18. In the 586th page of Mr. Smith's volume, you have it written that 'Calvus,' bald-head, was the name of a family of the Licinia gens; that the man of whom we hear earliest, as so named, was the first plebeian elected to military tribuneship in B.C. 400; and that the fourth of whom we hear, was surnamed 'Stolo,' because he was so particular in pruning away the Stolons (stolones), or useless young shoots, of his vines. We must keep this word 'stolon,' therefore, for these young suckers springing from an old root. Its derivation is uncertain; but the main idea meant by it is one of uselessness,--sprouting without occasion or fruit; and the words 'stolidus' and 'stolid' are really its derivatives, though we have lost their sense in English by partly confusing them with 'solid' which they have nothing to do with. A 'stolid' person is essentially a 'useless sucker' of society; frequently very leafy and graceful, but with no good in him. [Illustration: FIG. 15.] 19. Nevertheless, I won't allow our vegetable 'stolons' to be despised. Some of quite the most beautiful forms of leafage belong to them;--even the foliage of the olive itself is never seen to the same perfection on the upper branches as in the young ground-rods in which the dual groups of leaves crowd themselves in their haste into clusters of three. But, for our point of Latin history, remember always {143} that in 400 B.C., just a year before the death of Socrates at Athens, this family of Stolid persons manifested themselves at Rome, shooting up from plebeian roots into places where they had no business; and preparing the way for the degradation of the entire Roman race under the Empire; their success being owed, remember also, to the faults of the patricians, for one of the laws passed by Calvus Stolo was that the Sibylline books should be in custody of ten men, of whom five should be plebeian, "that no falsifications might be introduced in favour of the patricians." 20. All this time, however, we have got no name for the prettiest of all stems,--that of annual flowers growing high from among their ground leaves, like lilies of the valley, and saxifrages, and the tall primulas--of which this pretty type, Fig. 15, was cut for me by Mr. Burgess years ago; admirable in its light outline of the foamy globe of flowers, supported and balanced in the meadow breezes on that elastic rod of slenderest life. What shall we call it? We had better rest from our study of terms a little, and do a piece of needful classifying, before we try to name it. 21. My younger readers will find it easy to learn, and convenient to remember, for a beginning of their science, {144} the names of twelve great families of cinquefoiled flowers,[39] of which the first group of three, is for the most part golden, the second, blue, the third, purple, and the fourth, red. And their names, by simple lips, can be pleasantly said, or sung, in this order, the two first only being a little difficult to get over.
Which even in their Latin magniloquence will not be too terrible, namely,--
22. I do not care much to assert or debate my reasons for the changes of nomenclature made in this list. The {145} most gratuitous is that of 'Lucy' for 'Gentian,' because the King of Macedon, from whom the flower has been so long named, was by no means a person deserving of so consecrated memory. I conceive no excuse needed for rejecting Caryophyll, one of the crudest and absurdest words ever coined by unscholarly men of science; or Papilionaceae, which is unendurably long for pease; and when we are now writing Latin, in a sentimental temper, and wish to say that we gathered a daisy, we shall not any more be compelled to write that we gathered a 'Bellidem perennem,' or, an 'Oculum Diei.' I take the pure Latin form, Margarita, instead of Margareta, in memory of Margherita of Cortona,[40] as well as of the great saint: also the tiny scatterings and sparklings of the daisy on the turf may remind us of the old use of the word 'Margaritae,' for the minute particles of the Host sprinkled on the patina--"Has particulas [Greek: meridas] vocat Euchologium, [Greek: margaritas] Liturgia Chrysostomi."[41] My young German readers will, I hope, call the flower Gretschen,--unless they would uproot the daisies of the Rhine, lest French girls should also count their love-lots by the Marguerite. I must be so ungracious to my fair young readers, however, as to warn them that this trial of their lovers is a very favourable one, for, in nine blossoms out of {146} ten, the leaves of the Marguerite are odd, so that, if they are only gracious enough to begin with the supposition that he loves them, they must needs end in the conviction of it. 23. I am concerned, however, for the present, only with my first or golden order, of which the Roof-foil, or house-leek, is called in present botany, Sedum, 'the squatter,' because of its way of fastening itself down on stones, or roof, as close as it can sit. But I think this an ungraceful notion of its behaviour; and as its blossoms are, of all flowers, the most sharply and distinctly star-shaped, I shall call it 'Stella' (providing otherwise, in due time, for the poor little chickweeds;) and the common stonecrop will therefore be 'Stella domestica.' The second tribe, (at present saxifraga,) growing for the most part wild on rocks, may, I trust, even in Protestant botany, be named Francesca, after St. Francis of Assisi; not only for its modesty, and love of mountain ground, and poverty of colour and leaf; but also because the chief element of its decoration, seen close, will be found in its spots, or stigmata. In the nomenclature of the third order I make no change. 24. Now all this group of golden-blossoming plants agree in general character of having a rich cluster of radical leaves, from which they throw up a single stalk bearing clustered blossoms; for which stalk, when entirely leafless, I intend always to keep the term 'virgula,' the {147} 'little rod'--not painfully caring about it, but being able thus to define it with precision, if required. And these are connected with the stems of branching shrubs through infinite varieties of structure, in which the first steps of transition are made by carrying the cluster of radical leaves up, and letting them expire gradually from the rising stem: the changes of form in the leaves as they rise higher from the ground being one of quite the most interesting specific studies in every plant. I had set myself once, in a bye-study for foreground drawing, hard on this point; and began, with Mr. Burgess, a complete analysis of the foliation of annual stems; of which Line-studies II., III., and IV., are examples; reduced copies, all, from the beautiful Flora Danica. But after giving two whole lovely long summer days, under the Giesbach, to the blue scabious, ('Devil's bit,') and getting in that time, only half-way up it, I gave in; and must leave the work to happier and younger souls. 25. For these flowering stems, therefore, possessing nearly all the complex organization of a tree, but not its permanence, we will keep the word 'virga;' and 'virgula' for those that have no leaves. I believe, when we come to the study of leaf-order, it will be best to begin with these annual virgae, in which the leaf has nothing to do with preparation for a next year's branch. And now the remaining terms commonly applied to stems may be for the most part dispensed with; but several are interesting, and must be examined before dismissal. {148} 26. Indeed, in the first place, the word we have to use so often, 'stalk,' has not been got to the roots of, yet. It comes from the Greek [Greek: stelechos,] (stelechos,) the 'holding part' of a tree, that which is like a handle to all its branches; 'stock' is another form in which it has come down to us: with some notion of its being the mother of branches: thus, when Athena's olive was burnt by the Persians, two days after, a shoot a cubit long had sprung from the 'stelechos,' of it. 27. Secondly. Few words are more interesting to the modern scholarly and professorial mind than 'stipend.' (I have twice a year at present to consider whether I am worth mine, sent with compliments from the Curators of the University chest). Now, this word comes from 'stips,' small pay, which itself comes from 'stipo,' to press together, with the idea of small coin heaped up in little towers or piles. But with the idea of lateral pressing together, instead of downward, we get 'stipes,' a solid log; in Greek, with the same sense, [Greek: stupos,] (stupos,) whence, gradually, with help from another word meaning to beat, (and a side-glance at beating of hemp,) we get our 'stupid,' the German stumph, the Scottish sumph, and the plain English 'stump.' Refining on the more delicate sound of stipes, the Latins got 'stipula,' the thin stem of straw: which rustles and ripples daintily in verse, associated with spica and spiculum, used of the sharp pointed ear of corn, and its fine processes of fairy shafts. {149} 28. There are yet two more names of stalk to be studied, though, except for particular plants, not needing to be used,--namely, the Latin cau-dex, and cau-lis, both connected with the Greek [Greek: kaulos], properly meaning a solid stalk like a handle, passing into the sense of the hilt of a sword, or quill of a pen. Then, in Latin, caudex passes into the sense of log, and so, of cut plank or tablet of wood; thus finally becoming the classical 'codex' of writings engraved on such wooden tablets, and therefore generally used for authoritative manuscripts. Lastly, 'caulis,' retained accurately in our cauliflower, contracted in 'colewort,' and refined in 'kail,' softens itself into the French 'chou,' meaning properly the whole family of thick-stalked eatable salads with spreading heads; but these being distinguished explicitly by Pliny as 'Capitati,' 'salads with a head,' or 'Captain salads,' the mediaeval French softened the 'caulis capitatus' into 'chou cabus;'--or, to separate the round or apple-like mass of leaves from the flowery foam, 'cabus' simply, by us at last enriched and emphasized into 'cabbage.' 29. I believe we have now got through the stiffest piece of etymology we shall have to master in the course of our botany; but I am certain that young readers will find patient work, in this kind, well rewarded by the groups of connected thoughts which will thus attach themselves to familiar names; and their grasp of every language they learn must only be esteemed by them secure when they recognize its derivatives in these homely associations, {150} and are as much at ease with the Latin or French syllables of a word as with the English ones; this familiarity being above all things needful to cure our young students of their present ludicrous impression that what is simple, in English, is knowing, in Greek; and that terms constructed out of a dead language will explain difficulties which remained insoluble in a living one. But Greek is _not_ yet dead: while if we carry our unscholarly nomenclature much further, English soon will be; and then doubtless botanical gentlemen at Athens will for some time think it fine to describe what we used to call caryophyllaceae, as the [Greek: hedlephides]. 30. For indeed we are all of us yet but school-boys, clumsily using alike our lips and brains; and with all our mastery of instruments and patience of attention, but few have reached, and those dimly, the first level of science,--wonder. For the first instinct of the stem,--unnamed by us yet--unthought of,--the instinct of seeking light, as of the root to seek darkness,--what words can enough speak the wonder of it. Look. Here is the little thing, Line-study V. (A), in its first birth to us: the stem of stems; the one of which we pray that it may bear our daily bread. The seed has fallen in the ground with the springing germ of it downwards; with heavenly cunning the taught stem curls round, and seeks the never-seen light. Veritable 'conversion,' miraculous, called of God. And here is the oat {151} germ, (B)--after the wheat, most vital of divine gifts; and assuredly, in days to come, fated to grow on many a naked rock in hitherto lifeless lands, over which the glancing sheaves of it will shake sweet treasure of innocent gold. And who shall tell us how they grow; and the fashion of their rustling pillars--bent, and again erect, at every breeze. Fluted shaft or clustered pier, how poor of art, beside this grass-shaft--built, first to sustain the food of men, then to be strewn under their feet! We must not stay to think of it, yet, or we shall get no farther till harvest has come and gone again. And having our names of stems now determined enough, we must in next chapter try a little to understand the different kinds of them. The following notes, among many kindly sent me on the subject of Scottish Heraldry, seem to be the most trustworthy:-- "The earliest known mention of the thistle as the national badge of Scotland is in the inventory of the effects of James III., who probably adopted it as an appropriate illustration of the royal motto, _In defence_. "Thistles occur on the coins of James IV., Mary, James V., and James VI.; and on those of James VI. they are for the first time accompanied by the motto, _Nemo me impune lacesset_. "A collar of thistles appears on the gold bonnet-pieces of James V. of 1539; and the royal ensigns, as depicted in Sir David Lindsay's armorial register of 1542, are surrounded by a collar formed entirely of golden thistles, with an oval badge attached. {152} "This collar, however, was a mere device until the institution, or as it is generally but inaccurately called, the revival, of the order of the Thistle by James VII. (II. of England), which took place on May 29, 1687." Date of James III.'s reign 1460-1488. _ |
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