Note 16 — HENRY WARD BEECHER. (continued 8)
Reading edition
Loudon (Encyclopædia of Gardening, p. 448), has the following remarks:
“The bark is the medium in which the proper juices of the plant, in their descent from the leaves, are finally elaborated and brought to the state which is peculiar to the species. From the bark these juices are communicated to the medullary rays, to be by them deposited in the tissue of the wood. The character of timber, therefore, depends chiefly upon the influence of the bark: and hence, it is that the wood formed above a graft never partakes, in the slightest degree, of the nature of the wood below it. The bark, when young and green, like the leaves, is supposed, like them, to elaborate the sap, and hence may be considered as the universal leaf of a plant.”
These views corroborate the reasoning above, although Loudon extends the functions of the leaf to the bark. We have not been able, in our limited range of books, to find any other authority for this statement, respecting the “young and green bark.”