EECEEATIVE SCIENCE 



315 



WAYSIDE WEEDS AND THEIE TEACHINGS. 



HANDrTTL III. CONCLUDED. 



In the lesson whicli we appended to 

 Handful II., we endeavoured to give you 

 some idea of the parts of a perfect flower, 

 their uses and arrangement; we have now 

 to go a step further, and say somewhat of 

 the methods according to which flowers are 

 arranged upon the plants which bear them. 

 Perhaps it never occurred to any of our no- 



the most remote idea. Let us see whether 

 we cannot make our few wayside weeds give 

 us a clue to unravel, in some degree at least, 

 flower arrangements, or, as it is called in 

 botany, 



THE INPIOEESCENCE. 



We need scarcely remark that flowers, 

 and blossoms generally, are supported upon 



Fig. 52, — Flower-spikes and Leaves of Common Plantain. The peduncle springing from the root-cro-wn is 

 caUed a scape. It might also be called a rachis because of running straight to the extremity of the in- 

 florescence. 



viciate readers that flowers are arranged 

 upon their stems in any definite way. They 

 know that their mignonette grows in a little 

 pyramid, their Tom Thumb geraniums and 

 calceolarias in sorts of bunches, and so on, 

 and suppose there is some sort of set fashion 

 for them, but as to what it is, they have not 



a stalk or stem of some kind. In certain in- 

 stances there is but one flower to a stem, as 

 in the primrose, the snowdrop, etc. ; in others, 

 the blossoms are crowded on by hundreds 

 and thousands, and in every variety of form 

 and arrangement. Now this primary, or 

 main, flower-stem goes by the general name 



