Francis Darwin - On the power possessed by leaves of placing themselves at right angles to the direction of incident - 1881

DARWIN, Francis "On the power possessed by leaves of placing themselves at right angles to the direction of incident light." In: The Journal of the Linnean Society, June 3, Vol. XVIII, No. 112., pp. 420-55.
London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer and Williams and Norgate, June 3, 1881. 8vo. 419-473 pp. First edition / first printings. With 3 plates and 17 woodcuts in text. Original blue printed wrappers with some chipping, spine weared partly deattached.

First edition / printings of this extensive article (35 pages) on the phototropism of plants, written by Charles Darwin's son, while Charles was still alive. He expounds upon a topic that his father had discussed on numerous occasions. Francis collaborated with him on the book On the power of movement in plants, which was published a year earlier, and this article is an extension of the research done with his father (Freeman). https://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Freeman_ThePowerofMovementinPlants.html

Francis Darwin (1848-1925) was his father's assistant as well as a botanist in his own right. He was the foreign secretary of the Royal Society, a lecturer in botany at Cambridge, and served as President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He edited, and in 1887 had published The life and letters of Charles Darwin.