Botany: The Science of Plant Life — Text and Context

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In Category - Plants Flowers

Authors: Taylor, Norman, 1883-1967 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2015 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Plants; Botany -- Textbooks Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 104,598

Reading time 455 min

Text sections 13

The catalog record for Botany: The Science of Plant Life — Text and Context provides practical reading context through 104,598 words, 7 hr 35 min estimated reading time, and 13 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 23.7 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Plants,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #49211

Norman Taylor's 1922 botany textbook uses deliberate anthropomorphism to explain plant behavior, emphasizing accessible language over technical jargon. The excerpts show a methodical classification of families like Ericaceae and Lamiaceae, with precise observations on flower structure, ovary position, and pollination.

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File: pg49211

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POPULAR SCIENCE LIBRARY

WILLIAM J. MILLER HIPPOLYTE GRUENER A. RUSSELL BOND D. W. HERING LOOMIS HAVEMEYER ERNEST G. MARTIN ARTHUR SELWYN-BROWN ROBERT CHENAULT GIVLER ERNEST INGERSOLL WILFRED MASON BARTON WILLIAM B. SCOTT ERNEST J. STREUBEL NORMAN TAYLOR DAVID TODD CHARLES FITZHUGH TALMAN ROBIN BEACH

ARRANGED IN SIXTEEN VOLUMES WITH A HISTORY OF SCIENCE, GLOSSARIES AND A GENERAL INDEX

P. F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY NEW YORK

MANUFACTURED IN U. S. A.

THE SCIENCE OF PLANT LIFE

CURATOR, BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN

P. F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY NEW YORK

This book is for those who want some general knowledge of the plant world, without necessarily caring for the technical details upon which such knowledge is based. If it leaves the reader with an impulse to follow the subject further than has been possible here, it will have more than fulfilled its mission.

Throughout the book, it has often been convenient to refer to plants or their behavior in terms implying reasoning faculties. Of course, plants are never reasoning things, reasonable as many of their actions appear to be, and to ascribe such qualities to them is to saddle them with attributes perfectly foreign to the plant world. But the description of them in the terms of our everyday speech, the translation of plant behavior into the current conceptions of mankind, does so fix these in our minds that they cease to be among those interesting things that nearly everyone forgets. I have followed this method deliberately, understanding perfectly the objections to it, but believing, with the late C. E. Bessey, that in popular books “it is an admirable way of looking at some botanical things.”

All of the half-tone illustrations, except two, are from the photographic collections of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and I am under the greatest obligation to the director of that institution for permission to publish them here. The illustration of the living and fossil algæ has been taken from Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn’s “Origin and Evolution of Life,” with his kind permission. The illustration of desert vegetation is from a photograph by the late E. L. Morris, and kindly loaned from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum. All the line cuts in the text are from drawings made specially for this book by my wife, Bertha Fanning Taylor.

While grateful and particular acknowledgments can be made for the illustrations, it is difficult or impossible to properly express my indebtedness to all those who, through their books and pamphlets, have indirectly aided in the making of this book. It would involve the mention of most of the better known writers of the books found in the larger botanical libraries. It is a pleasure to acknowledge help from Dr. M. A. Howe of the New York Botanical Garden on the literature of fossil and hot-spring algæ, and from Dr. Orland E. White of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for helpful criticism of the section dealing with “How Plants Change Their Characters.”

BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN 20th October, 1920

INTRODUCTORY--PLANTS AND OUR DAILY NEEDS 9

I. WHAT PLANTS ARE 13

II. PLANT BEHAVIOR 76

III. HOW PLANTS PRODUCE THEIR YOUNG 116

IV. THE FAMILIES OF FLOWERING PLANTS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP 168

V. USES OF PLANTS TO MAN 208

VI. GARDEN PLANTS 267

VII. HISTORY OF THE PLANT KINGDOM 298

VIII. DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS 337

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE PRICKLY PEAR OF THE DESERT IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE BANYAN--A FIG TREE OF INDIA 32

LACELEAF--A SUBMERGED AQUATIC PLANT 33

ROOT HAIRS WITH FINE SOIL PARTICLES ATTACHED 33

AERIAL ROOTS OF FIG TREES 64

VENUS’S FLYTRAP--AN INSECTIVOROUS PLANT 65

INDIAN PIPE--A SAPHROPHYTIC PLANT 96

PARTRIDGE BERRY--A TRAILING VINE 96

RAFFLESIA, THE LARGEST FLOWER IN THE WORLD 97

TALIPOT PALM OF CEYLON 128

TRAVELERS’ TREE, A PLANT OF THE BANANA FAMILY 129

WIND-BLOWN POLLEN OF THE JAPANESE RED PINE 160

COCONUT GROVE IN THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 161

TRANSPLANTING RICE IN JAVA 192

TEA ESTATE IN CEYLON 193

BANANA PLANTATION IN FRUIT 224

RICE TERRACES IN CHINA 225

FOREST OF THE TEMPERATE ZONE 256

LUXURIANT VEGETATION OF A TROPICAL RAIN FOREST 257

FOSSIL AND LIVING ALGÆ COMPARED 320

LANDSCAPE OF THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE 321

DESERT PLANTS OF THE SOUTHWEST UNITED STATES 352

CONTEST BETWEEN GRASS LAND AND TREE VEGETATION 353

PLANTS AND OUR DAILY NEEDS

Perhaps few of us realize that without plants all our modern civilization would be swept away and that upon plants has been built all that we have so far accomplished and everything that we may yet become. The overthrow of any king or republic, the wiping out of all money and finance or any of the manifold evidences of our modern world could not for a moment be compared to what would happen to us with the sudden destruction of plant life from the earth.

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Norman Taylor, curator of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, wrote this 1922 textbook for readers who want “some general knowledge of the plant world, without necessarily caring for the technical details.” The preface defends a deliberate choice: describing plants in terms of everyday speech, even ascribing “reasoning faculties” to them, while acknowledging that plants are never reasoning things. This tension between accuracy and accessibility shapes every page.

The excerpts reveal a methodical author who moves from broad family characteristics to minute structural details—such as whether petals arise below or above the ovary. Taylor’s voice is precise yet conversational, aiming to fix botanical facts in memory through clear, concrete language rather than jargon.

Anthropomorphism as a Teaching Tool

Taylor openly adopts what he calls “an admirable way of looking at some botanical things”: describing plant actions in human terms. In the preface, he notes that plants are never reasoning, yet he finds it useful to translate their behavior into “the current conceptions of mankind.” This choice is not naive; he understands the objections but follows the late C. E. Bessey’s belief that for popular books, such language fixes facts in memory. The excerpts show this in action: flowers are described as “relying” on microorganisms, and families are said to “agree” in stamen position. The anthropomorphism is controlled—never whimsical—and always followed by precise botanical detail.

Classification Through Structural Contrasts

Taylor organizes plant families by contrasting physical traits. For the heath family (Ericaceae), he notes that most have a superior ovary, so the mature fruit is “never crowned with the remains of the withered calyx, as blueberries always are.” This single comparison separates two large groups of gamopetalae. He extends the method to flower symmetry: “Irregular and regular flowers may be recognized at once by cutting them lengthwise through the middle.” In regular flowers, both sides are equal; in irregular ones, “quite obviously more on one side than the other.” Such clear, testable criteria make classification an exercise in observation, not memorization.

Diction: Technical Terms Anchored by Examples

Taylor introduces specialized vocabulary—superior ovary, gamopetalae, saprophytes—but immediately grounds each term in familiar plants. The Indian pipe is a saprophyte; the cranberry is an exception among Ericaceae for having an inferior ovary. When describing the mint family (Lamiaceae), he notes “four-sided stems and opposite leaves without stipules” and that the garden salvia “well illustrates the type.” The effect is cumulative: a reader learns to see structural patterns across species. Taylor rarely defines a term without giving a concrete example, and he often repeats key distinctions—like superior versus inferior ovary—in multiple family descriptions.

Voice: Authoritative Yet Provisional

Taylor’s tone is that of a guide who knows his material but respects the reader’s limits. He uses phrases like “for lack of space, exclude most of them” and “a few of the most important, or typical.” He acknowledges gaps: “There are many other families in this part of the scheme… that have minor differences.” This honesty builds trust. He also inserts small, vivid details—such as that some primrose family members are “slightly luminous in the dark, apparently an attraction to night-flying insects”—that reward attentive reading. The voice is never condescending; it assumes curiosity and offers enough precision to satisfy without overwhelming.

Taylor’s book rewards readers who attend to his structural logic: the way he builds from ovary position to flower symmetry to family groupings. The excerpts suggest a work that balances systematic botany with a teacher’s instinct for the memorable example. Readers interested in how early twentieth-century popular science communicated technical content will find here a careful, self-aware approach—one that acknowledges its own compromises between accuracy and accessibility.

That rainy afternoon, Taylor’s patient anthropomorphizing made me feel like plants were quietly negotiating their lives, not just growing. His 1922 words felt unhurried, almost homely. Later, dusting a shelf, I pulled down Crimson Clover [1947] — Inside the Classic and found the same gentle patience, a field’s secret economy unfolding in prose that never raised its voice.