§ 2 Cell-contents
414. The living contents of young and active cells are mainly protoplasm with water or watery sap which this has imbibed. Old and effete cells are often empty of solid matter, containing only water with whatever may be dissolved in it, or air, according to the time and circumstances. All the various products which plants in general elaborate, or which particular plants specially elaborate, out of the common food which they derive from the soil and the air, are contained in the cells, and in the cells they are produced.
415. Sap is a general name for the principal liquid contents,—Crude sap, for that which the plant takes in, Elaborated sap for what it has digested or assimilated. They must be undistinguishably mixed in the cells.
416. Among the solid matters into which cells convert some of their elaborated sap two are general and most important. These are Chlorophyll and Starch.
417. Chlorophyll (meaning leaf-green) is what gives the green color to herbage. It consists of soft grains of rather complex nature, partly wax-like, partly protoplasmic. These abound in the cells of all common leaves and the green rind of plants, wherever exposed to the light. The green color is seen through the transparent skin of the leaf and the walls of the containing cells. Chlorophyll is essential to ordinary assimilation in plants: by its means, under the influence of sunlight, the plant converts crude sap into vegetable matter.
418. Far the largest part of all vegetable matter produced is that which goes to build up the plant’s fabric or cellular structure, either directly or indirectly. There is no one good name for this most important product of vegetation. In its final state of cell-walls, the permanent fabric of herb and shrub and tree, it is called Cellulose (408): in its most soluble form it is Sugar of one or another kind; in a less soluble form it is Dextrine, a kind of liquefied starch: in the form of solid grains stored up in the cells it is Starch. By a series of slight chemical changes (mainly a variation in the water entering into the composition), one of these forms is converted into another.
419. Starch (Farina or Fecula) is the form in which this common plant material is, as it were, laid by for future use. It consists of solid grains, somewhat different in form in different plants, in size varying from 1/300 to 1/4000 of an inch, partly translucent when wet, and of a pearly lustre. From the concentric lines, which commonly appear under the microscope, the grains seem to be made up of layer over layer. When loose they are commonly oval, as in potato-starch (Fig. 462): when much compacted the grains may become angular (Fig. 463).
420. The starch in a potato was produced in the foliage. In the soluble form of dextrine, or that of sugar, it was conveyed through the cells of the herbage and stalks to a subterranean shoot, and there stored up in the tuber. When the potato sprouts, the starch in the vicinity of developing buds or eyes is changed back again, first into mucilaginous dextrine, then into sugar, dissolved in the sap, and in this form it is made to flow to the growing parts, where it is laid down into cellulose or cell-wall.
421. Besides these cell-contents which are in obvious and essential relation to nutrition, there are others the use of which is problematical. Of such the commonest are
422. Crystals. These when slender or needle-shaped are called Rhaphides. They are of inorganic matter, usually of oxalate or phosphate or sulphate of lime. Some, at least of the latter, may be direct crystallizations of what is taken in dissolved in the water absorbed, but others must be the result of some elaboration in the plant. Some plants have hardly any; others abound in them, especially in the foliage and bark. In Locust-bark almost every cell holds a crystal; so that in a square inch not thicker than writing-paper there may be over a million and a half of them. When needle-shaped (rhaphides), as in stalks of Calla-Lily, Rhubarb, or Four-o’clock, they are usually packed in sheaf-like bundles. (Fig. 465, 466.)