thought they could do them by
the boughfull, whenever they liked. Alas, except by old William Hunt, and
Burne Jones, I've not seen a leaf painted, since those burdocks of
Turner's; far less sculptured--though one would think at first that was
easier! Of which we shall have talk elsewhere; here I must go on to note
fact number two, concerning leaves.

{134}

8. [II.] The strength of their supporting stem consists not merely in the
gathering together of all the fibres, but in gathering them essentially
into the profile of the letter V, which you will see your doubled paper
stem has; and of which you can feel the strength and use, in your hand, as
you hold it. Gather a common plantain leaf, and look at the way it puts its
round ribs together at the base, and you will understand the matter at
once. The arrangement is modified and disguised in every possible way,
according to the leaf's need: in the aspen, the leaf-stalk becomes an
absolute vertical plank; and in the large trees is often almost rounded
into the likeness of a fruit-stalk;--but, in all,[36] the essential
structure is this doubled one; and in all, it opens at the place where the
leaf joins the main stem, into a kind of cup, which holds next year's bud
in the hollow of it.

9. Now there would be no inconvenience in your simply getting into the
habit of calling the round petiol of the fruit the 'stalk,' and the
contracted channel of the leaf, 'leaf-stalk.' But this way of naming them
would not enforce, nor fasten in your mind, the difference between the two,
so well as if you have an entirely different name for the leaf-stalk. Which
is the more desirable, because the limiting character of the leaf,
botanically, is--(I only learned this from my botanical friend the other
day, just {135} in the very moment I wanted it,)--that it holds the bud of
the new stem in its own hollow, but cannot itself grow in the hollow of
anything else;--or, in botanical language, leaves are never
axillary,--don't grow in armpits, but are themselves armpits; hollows, that
is to say, where they spring from the main stem.

10. Now there is already a received and useful botanical word, 'cyme'
(which we shall want in a little while.) derived from the Greek [Greek:
kuma], a swelling or rising wave, and used to express a swelling cluster of
foamy blossom. Connected with that word, but in a sort the reverse of it,
you have the Greek '[Greek: kumbe],' the _hollow_ of a cup, or bowl; whence