Flores Poetici. the Florist's Manual; Designed as an Introduction to Vegetable Physiology and Systematic Botany for Cultivators of Flowers. with More Than Eighty Beautifully-Coloured Engravings of Poetic Flowers (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1833 Excerpt: ...these organs, and their various results are, if possible, more strikingly distinct than even those of the leaves. EFFLUVIA OF FLOWERS. 25. Mischief has undoubtedly arisen from flowers in a bedroom and other confined apartments. This is attributed to their perfumed effluvia. CUP OF FLOWERS. 175 The bad effects of the Lobelia longifora on the air of a hothouse, the danger incurred by those who sleep under the Machineel-tree or Hippomane mancinella, or, as is commonly believed, under a Walnut-tree, are probably to be attributed as much to poisonous secretions, as to the air these plants evolve. 26. Dr. Ingenhouz observed, that fruits and flowers almost invariably give out a bad or carbonic air, especially in the dark. This is particularly the case with leaves. Yet, as many believe, plants in the sunshine purify the air very quickly. This they do by a copious evolution of oxygen gas, which will often rise in streams, when leaves are immersed in an inverted tumbler of water placed in the sunlight. The Nymphaa alba or White Water Lily affords an extraordinary abundance of this gas. 27. Dr. Priestley found that plants would alter even unmixed inflammable air, or hydrogen. This was particularly the case with the Hydropiper, a species of Polygonum, and the Epilobium hirsutum. Mr. Ellis of Edinburgh however believes, from some experiments, that flowers, fruits, roots, and all parts of vegetating plants, at all times, both by day and night, whether in the sunshine or shade, consume oxygen from the atmosphere, and produce carbonic acid in its stead--that the production of oxygen from plants, is more than counterbalanced by its consumption, and the formation of carbonic acid. If this be true, vegetables deteriorate the atmosphere in a much greater degree than they impro...