The Power of Movement in Plants
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~200,000 words · 955 passages
Cite this work
- APACharles Darwin. (n.d.). The Power of Movement in Plants. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-darwin/the-power-of-movement-in-plants
- MLACharles Darwin. The Power of Movement in Plants. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-darwin/the-power-of-movement-in-plants.
- ChicagoCharles Darwin. The Power of Movement in Plants. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-darwin/the-power-of-movement-in-plants.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The study of how plants move: circumnutation, the constant circling of the growing tip, and the response to light, to gravity and to touch.
Context and history
Published in 1880, and written with his son Francis, who did a large share of the experiments; the title page says so and the catalogue does not, so it is worth stating. It is Darwin's last major book and his most experimental: they cap root tips with tiny hoods, throw light from the side, measure deviations over hours. At the end he proposes that the root tip acts as a centre directing the movement of the rest — an idea left aside for a century and taken up again by recent plant physiology.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
remained stationary for about an hour, and then probably growth occurred on the side opposite to that which caused the geotropic curvature. In the case previously described the basal part of the very short radicle from being turned vertically upwards, was at first very little affected by geotropism. Filaments were affixed in two other instances to rather longer radicles protruding obliquely from seeds which had been turned upside down; and in these cases the lines traced on the horizontal glasses were only slightly zigzag, and the movement was always in the same general direction, through the action of geotropism. All these observations are liable to several causes of error, but we believe, from what will hereafter be shown with respect to the movements of the radicles of other plants, that they may be largely trusted. Fig. 2. Brassica oleracea: circumnutating and geotropic movement of radicle, traced on horizontal glass during 46 hours. Hypocotyl.—The hypocotyl protrudes through the seed-coats as a rectangular projection, which grows rapidly into an arch like the letter U turned upside down; the cotyledons being still enclosed within the seed. In whatever position the seed may be embedded in the earth or otherwise fixed, both legs of the arch bend upwards through apogeotropism, and thus rise vertically above the ground. As soon as this has taken place, or even earlier, the inner or concave surface of the arch grows more quickly than the upper or convex surface; and this tends to separate the two legs and aids in drawing the cotyledons out of the buried seed-coats. By the growth of the whole arch the cotyledons are ultimately dragged from beneath the ground, even from a considerable depth; and now the hypocotyl quickly straightens itself by the increased growth of the concave side.…