234 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



there stand forth six apices, and these yellow; then prominently 

 from the midst of them a kind of thickish stamen that is green and 

 has a triangular head, the whole being shaped something like a 

 walking stick. "* 



In a flower of the size of a lily such diagnosis of less obvious 

 parts is easy, insomuch that one need not have been surprised if 

 many a writer before Tragus had indicated them as well; but for 

 similar inspection and diagnosis a gooseberry blossom was small 

 and difficult for a botanist whose researches antedated the inven- 

 tion of hand lenses. The following is our botanist's account of it; 

 and it is the oldest one extant: 2 " In March the bush puts forth its 

 flowers, small, concave, purple, which if you examine them one by 

 one you find to contain within five diminutive apices each sup- 

 ported on a hair, the whole resembling a little bell." 3 Another 

 flower which he is first to describe is that of the hawthorn. This is 

 not much larger than the gooseberry blossom, and of less simplicity 

 in its structure ; but he brings out its characteristics quite as clearly. 

 " The individual flower is made up of five small white leaves, from 

 out the middle of which there stand many white things like hairs 

 supporting rose-colored apices, such as one observes in all poma- 

 ceous flowers. "^ Among his "pomes" Tragus includes also the 

 drupe-bearing trees, and his account of their floral structure is 

 given once for all under the caption of the Wild Plum. 'The 

 individual flowers of the wild plum consist of five bright-white 

 leaves; and in the midst are seen about eighteen as clear white 

 capillamenta or stamina each supporting its small yellow apex. 

 Just about this is the structure of the flowers of nearly all the pomes, 

 cherries, plums, pears, and apples, except that some of them exhibit 

 a greater number of capillamenta and apices than do those of this 

 wild plum." 5 From this point forward throughout the line of the 

 pomaceous and drupaceous trees, he has little to say of the flowers 

 beyond this, that "they are those of all the pomes," sometimes 

 remarking that the "apices " are red, or that they are yellow. 



In thus taking a census of individual stamens, recording the 

 number of them as being constant in each different kind of flower, 

 even distinguishing by name each of their two parts, it is evident 



1 Stir p. Comm., p. 794. 



1 Fuchsius had said of gooseberry flowers only that they "are of a purplish 



green. " 



Stirp. Comm., p. 978. 

 Ibid., p. 934- 

 * Ibid., p. 1016. 



