Posts by Carol Jensen

There are a variety of plants which furnish products known as hemp, but commercially only three are of much importance, the plant universally known under that name, the Manila hemp, and sisal. All of them are used chiefly for cordage. The hemp of the ancients is a tall annual related to our nettles, with rough leaves, and a native of Asia. For centuries an intoxicating drink was made from the herbage of this plant, and this with the narcotic hashish, which is made from a resin exuded by the stems, obscured the fact that Cannabis sativa is a very valuable cordage plant.

So the palmate leaf, if again compounded in the same way, becomes twice palmate, or, as we say when the divisions are in threes, twice ternate (in Latin form biternate); if a third time compounded, thrice ternate or triternate. But if the division goes still further, or if the degree is variable, we simply say that the leaf is decompound; either palmately or pinnately decompound, as the case may be.

Glucose, mannose, and fructose all form identical osazones. This is because the structure of these three sugars is identical except for the arrangement within the two groups at the aldehyde end of the molecule (see formulas on page 44). Since it is to these two groups that the phenyl hydrazine residue attaches itself, it follows that the resulting osazones must be identical in structure and properties. All other reducing sugars yield osazones of different physical properties.

Some one has said that one day without water would make men liars, in two days they become thieves, and after the third or fourth day they would kill to get water. In the Army Records at Washington is a report of one of our expeditions, which in chasing Indians got lost in a desert, and in which the soldiers fought among themselves for even the most repulsive liquids. It hardly needs these gruesome examples, however, to confirm what everyone who has ever been mildly thirsty knows, that water is an essential for all animals, and that to be without it is to suffer torture. Air of the proper kind is just as important, and because its absence or impurity causes more sudden agony and a quicker death, the need of it is that much more acute. Plants rely even more upon these two essentials of life, and in getting them they behave in ways just as ruthless as do men who are suddenly deprived of either of them.

While most roots live under the surface many grow in the air, and a few grow from stems that are injured. The tomato vine often produces roots at the joints or where it has been injured. Such roots, known as adventitious roots, are fairly common in many plants, the common garden practice of making cuttings, which take root under favorable conditions, being based upon this fact.