definition
Relating to the flow of fluids, such as blood, lymph, or sap, through the body of an animal or plant, or to the vessels that carry such fluids
The root differs from the shoot in the characters of its surface tissues, in the absence of the green assimilative pigment chlorophyll, in the arrangement of its vascular system and in the mode of growth at the apex, all features which are in direct relation to its normally subterranean life and its fixative and absorptive functions.
The vascular supply of the leaf (leaf-trace) consists of a single strand only in the haplostelic and some of the more primitive siphonostelic forms. In the microphyllous groups Leaf.trace of Pteridophytes (Lycopodiales and Equisetales) in and Petlolar which the leaves are small relatively to the stem, the Strands, single bundle destined for each leaf is a small strand whose departure causes no disturbance in the cauline stele.
This is especially the case in the young vascular bundles themselves (desmogen strands).
In the Vascular Plants this tissue is collectively known as the vascular system.
In such cases the vascular system is said to be polycyclic in contrast with the ordinary monocyclic condition, These internal strands or cylinders are to be regarded as peculiar types of elaboration of the stele, and probably act as reservoirs for water-storage which can be drawn upon when the water supply from the root is deficient.
Such a vascular cylinder is called a haplostele, and the axis containing it is said to be haplostelic. In the stele of the root the strands of tracheids along the lines where the xylem touches the pericycle are spiral or annular, and are the xylem elements first formed when the cylinder is developing.
The vascular system is very rudimentary.
In higher forms the conducting strands of the leaves are continued downwards into the stem, and eventually come into connection with the central hydrom cylinder, forming a complete cylindrical investment apparently distinct from the latter, and exhibiting a differentiation into hydrom, leptom and amylom which almost completely parallels that found among the true vascular plants.
It is essentially a living tissue, and serves to place all the living cells of the secondary vascular tissues in communication.
In one type they may take the form of specially-modified single epidermal cells or multicellular hairs without any direct connection with the vascular system.
The body of a vascular plant is developed in the first place by repeated division of the fertilized egg and the growth of Develop- the products of division.
The tissue-elements just described are found only in the more complicated secondary vascular tissues of certain Dicotyledons.
Vascular system generally present forming a closed system of tubes.
The vascular system is not extensive, the arteries soon ending in the well-marked spongy tissue which builds up the muscular foot, parapodia, and dorsal body-wall.
The body-cavity and the muscular, fibrous and vascular tissues are traced partly to two symmetrically disposed " mesoblasts," which bud off from the invaginated arch-enteron, partly to cells derived from the ectoderm, which at a very early stage is connected by long processes with the invaginated endoderm.
No doubt can be entertained that the greater part of the inner layer corresponds to the mesoderm of more ordinary embryos, for the coelomic pouches, the germ-cells, the musculature and the vascular system all arise from it.
Two years later Nitzsch, who was indefatigable in his endeavour to discover the natural families of birds and had been pursuing a series of researches into their vascular system, published the result, at Halle in Saxony, in his Observationes de avium arteria carotide communi, in which is included a classification drawn up in accordance with the variation of structure which that important vessel presented in the several groups that he had opportunities of examining.
Outside the wall of the oesophagus a vascular space has been detected which is in direct continuity with the longitudinal blood-vessels.
In certain cases, however, the walls of the oesophagus appear to be very closely applied to the muscular body-wall and this vascular space thereby considerably reduced.
The circulatory system of Carinella is considerably different, being more lacunar and less restricted to definite vascular channels.
The vascular system is entirely closed.
In origin the vascular system is due to a fusion of spaces which arise in the mesoblast of the larva.
As a rule these organs only extend a short way along the anterior end of the body, a concentration which we may associate with the development of a vascular system I--- to bring the products of excretion to a fixed spot.
There are no specialized sense-organs or vascular or respiratory systems. There is a wide body-cavity, but as this has no connexion with the renal or reproductive organs it cannot be regarded as a coelom, but probably is a blood-space or haemocoel.
Specimens of flowering plants and vascular cryptograms are generally mounted on sheets of stout smooth paper, of uniform quality; the size adopted at Kew is 17 in.
It seems likely that the coelomic pore-canals were originally excretory organs, but in the existing Enteropneusta the pore-canals (especially the collar canals) have, as we have seen, acquired new functions or become vestigial, and the function of excretion is now mainly accomplished by a structure peculiar to the Enteropneusta called the glomerulus, a vascular complex placed on either side of the anterior portion of the stomochord, projecting into the proboscis-coelom.
The vascular system itself is quite peculiar, consisting of lacunae and channels destitute of endothelium, situated within the thickness of the basementmembrane of the body-wall, of the gut-wall and of the mesenteries.
The vascular system does not readily lend itself to morphological comparison between such widely different animals as Balanoglossus and Amphioxus, and the reader is therefore referred to the memoirs cited at the end of this article for further details.
Correlated with the presence of the genital pleurae there is a pair of vascular folds of the basement membrane proceeding from the dorsal wall of the gut in the postbranchial portion of the branchio-genital region, and from the dorsal angles made by the pleural folds with the body-wall in the pharyngeal region; they pass, in their most fully developed condition, to the free border of the genital pleurae.
These vascular membranes are called the lateral septa.
On the inner surface of both valves several well-defined muscular, vascular and ovarian impressions are observable; they form either indentations of greater or less size and depth, or occur as variously shaped projections.
This sinus is continued round the oesophagus as the peri-oesophageal sinus, and thus the whole complex of the small arm-sinus has the relations of the so-called vascular system of a Sipunculid.
There is thus a vascular ring around the oesophagus.
There is thus brought into play a series of processes on the part of the tissues - the vascular inflammatory changes - which is really the first move to neutralize the malign effects.
The vascular changes are practically absent in healing by first intention.
These vascular buds grow out in various directions as little solid projections of cells; they then become channelled and form the new but temporary meshwork.
This reaction is carried out by the mobile phagocytes sometimes alone, sometimes with the aid of the vascular phagocytes, or of the nervous system."
The discoveries of the separate paths of sensory and motor impulses in the spinal cord, and consequently of the laws of reflex action, by Charles Bell and Marshall Hall respectively, in their illumination of the phenomena of nervous function, may be compared with the discovery in the region of the vascular system of the circulation of the blood; for therein a key to large classes of normal and aberrant functions and a fertile principle of interpretation were obtained.
Many other diseases formerly regarded as primarily diseases of the nervous system are not such; but, by means of agents either introduced into the body or modified there, establish themselves after the affinities of these in contiguous associated parts of the structure, as in vascular, membranous or connective elements, or again in distant and peripheral parts; the perturbations of nervous function being secondary and consequential.
In heart disease the chief work of the latter half of the 19th century was, in the first quarter, such clinical work as that of William Stokes and Peter Mere Latham (1789-1875); and in the second quarter the fuller comprehension of the vascular system, central and peripheral, with its cycles and variations of blood pressure, venous and arterial.
The vascular plants already described number about 1500 species.
There is no trace of a true vascular system.
There are no pores in the foot or elsewhere in Lamellibranchia by which water can pass into and out of the vascular system, as formerly asserted.
The Molluscan ctenidium is typically a plume like structure, consisting of a vascular axis, on each side of which is set a row of numerous lamelliform or filamentous processes.
Branchial filaments united by vascular interfilamentar junctions and vascular interlamellar junctions; the latter contain the afferent vessels.
The stomach is formed upon much the same principle as that of the horse or rhinoceros, but is more elongated transversely and divided by a constriction into two cavities - a large left cul de sac, lined by a very dense white epithelium, and a right pyloric cavity, with a thick, soft, vascular lining.
The typical foliage leaf consists of several layers, and amongst vascular plants is distinguishable into an outer layer (epidermis) and a central tissue (parenchyma) with fibro-vascular bundles distributed through it.
In vascular acotyledonous plants there is frequently a tendency to fork exhibited by the fibro-vascular bundles in the leaf; and when this is the case we have f ork-veined leaves.
The water taken up by the root from the soil contains nitrogenous and mineral salts which combine with the first product of photo-synthesis - a carbohydrate - to form more complicated nitrogen-containing food substances of a proteid nature; these are then distributed by other elements of the vascular bundles (the phloem) through the leaf to the stem and so throughout the plant to wherever growth or development is going on.
When the vascular bundles reach the base of the lamina they separate and spread out in various ways, as already described under venation.