The Power of Movement in Plants by Charles Darwin (book club books TXT) 📖

to act on plants in nearly the same manner as it does on animals by means of the nervous system.* With seedlings the effect, as we have just seen, is transmitted from one part to another. An animal may be excited to move by a very small amount of light; and it has been shown that a difference in the illumination of the two sides of the cotyledons of Phalaris, which could not be distinguished by the human eye, sufficed to cause them to bend. It has also been shown that there is no close parallelism between the amount of light which acts on a plant and its degree of curvature; it was indeed hardly possible to perceive any difference in the curvature of some seedlings of Phalaris exposed to a light, which, though dim, was very much brighter than that to which others had been exposed. The retina, after being stimulated by a bright light, feels the effect for some time; and Phalaris continued to bend for nearly half an hour towards the side which had been illuminated. The retina cannot perceive a dim light after it has been exposed to a bright one; and plants which had been kept in the daylight during the previous day and morning, did not move so soon towards an obscure lateral light as did others which had been kept in complete darkness.

 

Even if light does act in such a manner on the growing parts of plants as always to excite in them a tendency to bend towards the more illuminated side—a supposition contradicted by the foregoing experiments on seedlings and by all apheliotropic

* Sachs has made some striking remarks to the same effect with respect to the various stimuli which excite movement in plants. See his paper ‘Ueber orthotrope und plagiotrope Pflanzentheile,’ ‘Arb. des Bot. Inst. in W�rzburg,’ 1879, B. ii. p. 282.

[page 488]

 

organs—yet the tendency differs greatly in different species, and is variable in degree in the individuals of the same species, as may be seen in almost any pot of seedlings of a long cultivated plant.* There is therefore a basis for the modification of this tendency to almost any beneficial extent. That it has been modified, we see in many cases: thus, it is of more importance for insectivorous plants to place their leaves in the best position for catching insects than to turn their leaves to the light, and they have no such power. If the stems of twining plants were to bend towards the light, they would often be drawn away from their supports; and as we have seen they do not thus bend. As the stems of most other plants are heliotropic, we may feel almost sure that twining plants, which are distributed throughout the whole vascular series, have lost a power that their non-climbing progenitors possessed. Moreover, with Ipomoea, and probably all other twiners, the stem of the young plant, before it begins to twine, is highly heliotropic, evidently in order to expose the cotyledons or the first true leaves fully to the light. With the Ivy the stems of seedlings are moderately heliotropic, whilst those of the same plants when grown a little older

 

* Strasburger has shown in his interesting work (‘Wirkung des Lichtes…auf Schw�rmsporen,’ 1878), that the movement of the swarm-spores of various lowly organised plants to a lateral light is influenced by their stage of development, by the temperature to which they are subjected, by the degree of illumination under which they have been raised, and by other unknown causes; so that the swarm-spores of the same species may move across the field of the microscope either to or from the light. Some individuals, moreover, appear to be indifferent to the light; and those of different species behave very differently. The brighter the light, the straighter is their course. They exhibit also for a short time the after-effects of light. In all these respects they resemble the higher plants. See, also, Stahl, ‘Ueber den einfluss der Lichts auf die Bewegungs-erscheinungen der Schw�rmsporen’ Verh. d. phys.-med. Geselsshalft in W�rzburg, B. xii. 1878.

[page 489]

 

are apheliotropic. Some tendrils which consist of modified leaves—organs in all ordinary cases strongly diaheliotropic—have been rendered apheliotropic, and their tips crawl into any dark crevice.

 

Even in the case of ordinary heliotropic movements, it is hardly credible that they result directly from the action of the light, without any special adaptation. We may illustrate what we mean by the hygroscopic movements of plants: if the tissues on one side of an organ permit of rapid evaporation, they will dry quickly and contract, causing the part to bend to this side.

Now the wonderfully complex movements of the pollinia of Orchis pyramidalis, by which they clasp the proboscis of a moth and afterwards change their position for the sake of depositing the pollen-masses on the double stigma—or again the twisting movements, by which certain seeds bury themselves in the ground*—follow from the manner of drying of the parts in question; yet no one will suppose that these results have been gained without special adaptation. Similarly, we are led to believe in adaptation when we see the hypocotyl of a seedling, which contains chlorophyll, bending to the light; for although it thus receives less light, being now shaded by its own cotyledons, it places them—the more important organs—in the best position to be fully illuminated. The hypocotyl may therefore be said to sacrifice itself for the good of the cotyledons, or rather of the whole plant. But if it be prevented from bending, as must sometimes occur with seedlings springing up in an entangled mass of vegetation, the cotyledons themselves bend so as to face the light; the one farthest off rising

 

* Francis Darwin, ‘On the Hygroscopic Mechanism,’ etc., ‘Transactions Linn.

Soc.,’ series ii. vol. i. p. 149, 1876.

[page 490]

 

up, and that nearest to the light sinking down, or both twisting laterally.* We may, also, suspect that the extreme sensitiveness to light of the upper part of the sheath-like cotyledons of the Gramineae, and their power of transmitting its effects to the lower part, are specialised arrangements for finding the shortest path to the light. With plants growing on a bank, or thrown prostrate by the wind, the manner in which the leaves move, even rotating on their own axes, so that their upper surfaces may be again directed to the light, is a striking phenomenon. Such facts are rendered more striking when we remember that too intense a light injures the chlorophyll, and that the leaflets of several Leguminosae when thus exposed bend upwards and present their edges to the sun, thus escaping injury. On the other hand, the leaflets of Averrhoa and Oxalis, when similarly exposed, bend downwards.

 

It was shown in the last chapter that heliotropism is a modified form of circumnutation; and as every growing part of every plant circumnutates more or less, we can understand how it is that the power of bending to the light has been acquired by such a multitude of plants throughout the vegetable kingdom. The manner in which a circumnutating movement—that is, one consisting of a succession of irregular ellipses or loops—is gradually converted into a rectilinear course towards the light, has been already explained. First, we have a succession of ellipses with their longer axes directed towards the light, each of which * Wiesner has made remarks to nearly the same effect with respect to leaves: ‘Die undulirende Nutation der Internodien,’ p. 6, extracted from B.

lxxvii. (1878). Sitb. der k. Akad. der Wissensch. Wien.

[page 491]

 

is described nearer and nearer to its source; then the loops are drawn out into a strongly pronounced zigzag line, with here and there a small loop still formed. At the same time that the movement towards the light is increased in extent and accelerated, that in the opposite direction is lessened and retarded, and at last stopped. The zigzag movement to either side is likewise gradually lessened, so that finally the course becomes rectilinear. Thus under the stimulus of a fairly bright light there is no useless expenditure of force.

 

As with plants every character is more or less variable, there seems to be no great difficulty in believing that their circumnutating movements may have been increased or modified in any beneficial manner by the preservation of varying individuals. The inheritance of habitual movements is a necessary contingent for this process of selection, or the survival of the fittest; and we have seen good reason to believe that habitual movements are inherited by plants. In the case of twining species the circumnutating movements have been increased in amplitude and rendered more circular; the stimulus being here an internal or innate one. With sleeping plants the movements have been increased in amplitude and often changed in direction; and here the stimulus is the alternation of light and darkness, aided, however, by inheritance. In the case of heliotropism, the stimulus is the unequal illumination of the two sides of the plant, and this determines, as in the foregoing cases, the modification of the circumnutating movement in such a manner that the organ bends to the light.

A plant which has been rendered heliotropic by the above means, might readily lose this tendency, judging from the cases already given, as soon as it became useless or

[page 492]

injurious. A species which has ceased to be heliotropic might also be rendered apheliotropic by the preservation of the individuals which tended to circumnutate (though the cause of this and most other variations is unknown) in a direction more or less opposed to that whence the light proceeded. In like manner a plant might be rendered diaheliotropic.

[page 493]

 

CHAPTER X.

 

MODIFIED CIRCUMNUTATION: MOVEMENTS EXCITED BY GRAVITATION.

 

Means of observation - Apogeotropism—Cytisus—Verbena—Beta—Gradual conversion of the movement of circumnutation into apogeotropism in Rubus, Lilium, Phalaris, Avena, and Brassica—Apogeotropism retarded by heliotropism—Effected by the aid of joints or pulvini—Movements of flower-peduncles of Oxalis—General remarks on apogeotropism—Geotropism—

Movements of radicles—Burying of seed-capsules—Use of process—Trifolium subterraneum—Arachis—Amphicarpaea—Diageotropism—Conclusion OUR object in the present chapter is to show that geotropism, apogeotropism, and diageotropism are modified forms of circumnutation.

Extremely fine filaments of glass, bearing two minute triangles of paper, were fixed to the summits of young stems, frequently to the hypocotyls of seedlings, to flower-peduncles, radicles, etc., and the movements of the parts were then traced in the manner already described on vertical and horizontal glass-plates. It should be remembered that as the stems or other parts become more and more oblique with respect to the glasses, the figures traced on them necessarily become more and more magnified. The plants were protected from light, excepting whilst each observation was being made, and then the light, which was always a dim one, was allowed to enter so as to interfere as little as possible with the movement in progress; and we did not detect any evidence of such interference.

 

When observing the gradations between circumnu-

[page 494]

tation and heliotropism, we had the great advantage of being able to lessen the light; but with geotropism analogous experiments were of course impossible. We could, however, observe the movements of stems placed at first only a little from the perpendicular, in which case geotropism did not act with nearly so much power, as when the stems were horizontal and at right angles to the force. Plants, also, were selected which were but feebly geotropic or apogeotropic, or had become so from having grown rather old. Another plan was to place the stems at first so that they pointed 30

or 40o beneath the horizon, and then apogeotropism had a great amount of work to do before the stem was rendered upright; and in this case ordinary circumnutation was often not wholly obliterated. Another plan was to observe in the evening plants which during the day had become greatly curved heliotropically; for their stems under