VEGETABLE

Definitions

1. 1. Of or pertaining to plants; having the nature of, or produced by, plants; as, a vegetable nature; vegetable growths, juices, etc. Blooming ambrosial fruit Of vegetable gold. Milton.
2. 2. Consisting of, or comprising, plants; as, the vegetable kingdom. Vegetable alkali (Chem.), an alkaloid. -- Vegetable brimstone. (Bot.) See Vegetable sulphur, below. -- Vegetable butter (Bot.), a name of several kinds of concrete vegetable oil; as that produced by the Indian butter tree, the African shea tree, and the Pentadesma butyracea, a tree of the order Guttiferæ, also African. Still another kind is pressed from the seeds of cocoa (Theobroma). -- Vegetable flannel, a textile material, manufactured in Germany from pine-needle wool, a down or fiber obtained from the leaves of the Pinus sylvestris. -- Vegetable ivory. See Ivory nut, under Ivory. -- Vegetable jelly. See Pectin. -- Vegetable kingdom. (Nat. Hist.) See the last Phrase, below. --
3. 3. Plants having distinct flowers and true seeds. { 1. Dicotyledons (called also Exogens). -- Seeds with two or more cotyledons. Stems with the pith, woody fiber, and bark concentrically arranged. Divided into two subclasses: Angiosperms, having the woody fiber interspersed with dotted or annular ducts, and the seed contained in a true ovary; Gymnosperms, having few or no ducts in the woody fiber, and the seeds naked. 2. Monocotyledons (called also Endogens). -- Seeds with single cotyledon. Stems with slender bundles of woody fiber not concentrically arranged, and with no true bark.} II. Cryptogamia.
4. 4. Plants without true flowers, and reproduced by minute spores of various kinds, or by simple cell division. { 1. Acrogens. -- Plants usually with distinct stems and leaves, existing in two alternate conditions, one of which is nonsexual and sporophoric, the other sexual and oöphoric. Divided into Vascular Acrogens, or Pteridophyta, having the sporophoric plant conspicuous and consisting partly of vascular tissue, as in Ferns, Lycopods, and Equiseta, and Cellular Acrogens, or Bryophyta, having the sexual plant most conspicuous, but destitute of vascular tissue, as in Mosses and Scale Mosses. 2. Thallogens. -- Plants without distinct stem and leaves, consisting of a simple or branched mass of cellular tissue, or educed to a single cell. Reproduction effected variously. Divided into Algæ, which contain chlorophyll or its equivalent, and which live upon air and water, and Fungi, which contain no chlorophyll, and live on organic matter. (Lichens are now believed to be fungi parasitic on included algæ.}