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Plants and their children

Chapter 56: LEAF VEINS
By Frances Theodora Parsons
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Children & Young Adult ReadingNature/Gardening/AnimalsTeaching & Education

About This Book

The book is a child-focused natural history that guides readers through fruits, seeds, young plants, roots and stems, buds, leaves, and flowers across the school year, combining simple explanations of plant structure and reproduction, seed dispersal methods, and physiological processes with seasonal observation exercises and classroom activities. It emphasizes hands-on collection, identification, and experiments, describes common plant families and adaptations, and offers teachers practical arrangements and illustrations to develop observational habits and an enduring interest in nature.

LEAF VEINS

Some time ago you learned that from the stem of a plant you could guess the number of seed leaves which it brought into the world, and that in the same way from the seed leaves you could guess what kind of a stem it would build up.

From the way in which a leaf is veined you can guess both of these things. You can guess what sort of a stem belongs to the plant, and with how many seed leaves it began life.

When the little veins run in and out, forming a sort of network, we say that the leaf is “net-veined.”

Fig. 140

Fig. 141

Fig. 142

These leaves of the quince (Fig. 140), the maple (Fig. 141), and the basswood (Fig. 142) are all net-veined.

Net-veined leaves are borne by plants which brought into the world more than one seed leaf; and with the net-veined leaf we can expect to find that stem which comes with more than one seed leaf,—a stem where the skin or bark, the woody rings, and the soft central pith, are clearly separated one from another.

Fig. 143

Fig. 144

But a leaf such as that in Fig. 143 or that in Fig. 144, where the veins do not branch off in a network, but run in unbroken lines side by side,—such leaves as these tell you that they are borne by plants which started life with only one seed leaf, and which have such a stem as the cornstalk, where you see no woody rings or central pith.

These leaves are called “parallel-veined.”

I fear that you find all this a little difficult to understand and to remember; but if you read it patiently, when you study the botany for older children, I think it will come back to you and make your lessons easier.