148 PAPILIONACEOUS TYPE [CH. 



tube has carried up the sepals, petals and stamens to a 

 level which overtops the carpels in position they are 

 therefore epigynous but the latter remain free and do 

 not adhere to the calyx-tube. 



In the Apple, Pear and their allies, we have a con- 

 dition of affairs very similar to the last, but the flower 

 has now become truly epigynous, the insertion of the 

 sepals, petals and stamens being brought right on to the 

 top of the structure, and the carpels fuse more or less one 

 with another and with the walls of the calyx-tube. 



Thus the Rosaceous type of flower may be shortly 

 characterised as regular (actinomorphic) with a calyx- 

 tube bearing five sepals, five free alternate petals, and 

 numerous stamens, and one to five or more carpels either 

 apocarpous and nearly superior, or syncarpous and more 

 or less inferior. The general floral formula is 



K 5 C 5 A ao 100 [or (2 x )] 



and the fleshy ^portion of the " fruit " may be formed from 

 the true carpels (Primus, Rubus, &c.), or from the calyx- 

 tube (Rosa, Pyrus, &c.). There are other variations in the 

 " fruits " of Rosaceous plants not here concerned. 



Another well-marked type of flower is that met with 

 in the great Natural Order LeguminosaB, and especially 

 characteristic of the Papilionaceae, the only division of 

 the order which concerns us : it is termed the papilion- 

 aceous flower, because older observers compared it with 

 a butterfly. Any flower of a Laburnum, Robinia, 

 Gorse, Whin, Broom, Petty Whin, &c., illustrates the 

 type. 



A more or less tubular or cup-shaped calyx is cut at 

 its margins into five equal or unequal sepaline teeth or 

 lobes, and is therefore gamosepalous. 



On the inner face of this, near its base, are inserted 



