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[1856?] [Grasses]

In duration, grasses vary, from the annual species which spring from the seed & in a few months perform all their functions and die, to the cane which lives thirty years before it perfects its blossoms.

Most of those noted as perennial are only so in regard to the roots- the culms & leaves annually die away, leaving only the roots undergrown to continue life on the approach of favorable conditions the next year.

Some are biennial, that is, they germinate and grow to a certain extent the first year but perfect their seed the next. Winter wheat is a familiar & universaly known example of this kind of growth.

The cell is the element of vegetable stucture. It is a sack or little bladder consisting of two coats, an outer and an inner. [sketch]. The form is round, but modified by a pressure against each other into a wonderful variety of shapes. [sketch].* These cells make up the whole body of all vegetable metter whether root, culm, flowers, fruit, or even seed. It is in these minute cells, usually so small as to be invisible to the naked eye that all the vegetable processes of nature are carried on. Their action & function resemble [is in] in some degree [analogous to] those of the stomach in animals, [crossed out]. In them chemical processes are constantly going on during the life of the plant.

*Sometimes these cells are very much elongated [forming?] tubes, of very minute size but of considerable length. These constitute the vegetable fibre, and are called "bass[base?]-cells"