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Updated: June 5, 2025
All the specimens have a green blade which, in ordinary speech, we call the leaf. Some have a stalk, or petiole, others are joined directly to the stem. In some of them, as a rose-leaf, for instance, there are two appendages at the base of the petiole, called stipules. These three parts are all that any leaf has, and a leaf that has them all is complete. Let us examine the blade.
The common dog-rose of England is furnished with glands on the stipules, and in other species they are more numerous, until in the wild Rosa villosa of the northern counties the leaves are thickly edged, and the fruit and sepals covered with stalked glands. I have only observed the wild roses in the north of England, and there I have never seen insects attending the glands.
The buds are small, flat, and rounded at the apex. They are sheathed by scales, each leaf being covered by a pair, whose edges cohere. The outer pair are brown and are the stipules of the last leaf of the preceding year. Their shape is very clearly to be seen, and no bud is more interesting in the closeness of its packing. Axillary buds are often found within.
CUCURBITACEAE. The tendrils in this family have been ranked by competent judges as modified leaves, stipules, or branches; or as partly a leaf and partly a branch. De Candolle believes that the tendrils differ in their homological nature in two of the tribes. From facts recently adduced, Mr.
Other instances could be given proving that bracts and stipules, when systematically lacking, are liable to reappear as anomalies. In doing so, they generally assume the peculiar characters that would be expected of them by comparison with allied genera in which they are of normal occurrence.
Certain plants excrete a sweet juice, apparently for the sake of eliminating something injurious from their sap: this is effected by glands at the base of the stipules in some Leguminosae, and at the back of the leaf of the common laurel. This juice, though small in quantity, is greedily sought by insects.
The scales of the bud are modified stipules. The terminal buds have about three pairs of the outer scales brown and leathery. The inner scales, as well as the leaves, are coated with resinous matter, which has a strong odor and a nauseous taste.
The honeysuckle genus is, as a rule, devoid of the stipules at the base of the petiole, but Lonicera etrusca has been observed to develop such organs, which were seen to be free in some, but in other specimens were adnate to the base of the leaf, and even connate with those of the opposite leaf.
There are five or more leaves, each placed between a pair of scales. Our knowledge of the parts of a leaf shows us at once that the scales must be modified stipules, and that therefore they must be in pairs. Other examples of scales homologous with stipules are the American Elm, Tulip-tree, Poplar and Magnolia. The leaves are plaited on the veins and covered with long, silky hairs.
I did not tell them that the way to tell a single leaf was to look for buds in the axils, but incautiously drew their attention to the stipules at the base of a rose leaf as a means of knowing that the whole was one.
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