Fungal and phanerogamic parasites can make no use of stich substances as carbon dioxide, but draw elaborated products from the bodies of their hosts.
Their distinctive and adaptive characteristics doubtless began to be established as soon as the phanerogamic flora was constituted.
The British Phanerogamic flora, it may be remarked, does not contain a single endemic species, and 38% of the total number are common to the three northern continents.
His activity was by no means confined to palaeobotany, but extended into all branches of botany, more particularly anatomy and phanerogamic taxonomy.
The only countries where the order plays a distinctly subordinate part are some extra-tropical regions of the southern hemisphere, Australia, the Cape, Chili, &c. The proportion of graminaceous species to the whole phanerogamic flora in different countries is found to vary from nearly 4th in the Arctic regions to about 2 nth at the Cape; in the British Isles it is about y2th.