NO one can look at the plants growing on a bank or on the borders of a thick wood, and doubt that the young stems and leaves place themselves so that the leaves may be well illuminated. They are thus enabled to decompose carbonic acid. But the sheath-like cotyledons of some Gramineae, for instance, those of Phalaris, are not green and contain very little starch; from which fact we may infer that they decompose little or no carbonic acid. Nevertheless, they are extremely heliotropic; and this probably serves them in another way, namely, as a guide from the buried seeds through fissures in the ground or through overlying masses of vegetation, into the light and air. This view [page 450] is strengthened by the fact that with Phalaris and Avena the first true leaf, which is bright green and no doubt decomposes carbonic acid, exhibits hardly a trace of heliotropism. The heliotropic movements of many other seedlings probably aid them in like manner in emerging from the ground; for apogeotropism by itself would blindly guide them upwards, against any overlying obstacle.
Heliotropism prevails so extensively among the higher plants, that there are extremely few, of which some part, either the stem, flower-peduncle, petiole, or leaf, does not bend towards a lateral light. Drosera rotundifolia is one of the few plants the leaves of which exhibit no trace of heliotropism. Nor could we see any in Dionaea, though the plants were not so carefully observed. Sir J. Hooker exposed the pitchers of Sarracenia for some time to a lateral light, but they did not bend towards it.* We can understand the reason why these insectivorous plants should not be heliotropic, as they do not live chiefly by decomposing carbonic acid; and it is much more important to them that their leaves should occupy the best position for capturing insects, than that they should be fully exposed to the light.
Tendrils, which consist of leaves or of other organs modified, and the stems of twining plants, are, as Mohl long ago remarked, rarely heliotropic; and here again we can see the reason why, for if they had moved towards a lateral light they would have been drawn away from their supports. But some tendrils are apheliotropic, for instance those of Bignonia capreolata
* According to F. Kurtz ('Verhandl. des Bot. Vereins der Provinz Brandenburg,' Bd. xx. 1878) the leaves or pitchers of Darlingtonia Californica are strongly apheliotropic. We failed to detect this movement in a plant which we possessed for a short time. [page 451]
and of Smilax aspera; and the stems of some plants which climb by rootlets, as those of the Ivy and Tecoma radicans, are likewise apheliotropic, and they thus find a support. The leaves, on the other hand, of most climbing plants are heliotropic; but we could detect no signs of any such movement in those of Mutisia clematis.
As heliotropism is so widely prevalent, and as twining plants are distributed throughout the whole vascular series, the apparent absence of any tendency in their stems to bend towards the light, seemed to us so remarkable a fact as to deserve further investigation, for it implies that heliotropism can be readily eliminated. When twining plants are exposed to a lateral light, their stems go on revolving or circumnutating about the same spot, without any evident deflection towards the light; but we thought that we might detect some trace of heliotropism by comparing the average rate at which the stems moved to and from the light during their successive revolutions.* Three young plants (about a foot in height) of Ipomoea caerulea and four of I. purpurea, growing in separate pots, were placed on a bright day before a north-east window in a room otherwise darkened, with the tips of their revolving stems fronting the window. When the tip of each plant pointed directly from the window, and when again towards it, the times were recorded. This was continued from 6.45 A.M. till a little after 2 P.M. on June 17th. After a few observations we concluded that we could safely estimate the time
* Some erroneous statements are unfortunately given on this subject, in 'The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants,' 1875, pp.