68 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



Peoxv Myths. — When it comes to the recording of 

 myths, one never knows how much is really folk-lore handed 

 down from antic[uity and how much has been added by the 

 narrator to make a good story. Peony myths, however, may 

 have a rather more substantion basis of fact since Pliny, in 

 the first century of our era, has recorded that the earliest 

 known of medicinal plants was the peony. It is fabled that 

 disguised as the physician Paeon, Apollo healed Pluto with his 

 plant, in consequence of which the early physicians were known 

 as Paconi and the plant of course became Paeonia or peony. 

 Apollo, being the god of light and healing, it is natural that a 

 hymn in his honor should be called a paean. Another myth 

 has it that Paeon was an actual personage and upon being 

 put to death by his divine rival, Aesculapius, was changed 

 into a peony by his protector Apollo. 



Flowers and Sex. — The commonest form of flower is 

 that in which both stamens and carpels are present ; in fact, 

 this is regarded by the unbotanical as the only kind of flower. 

 When any extended study of these structures is made, how- 

 ever, two other types usually appear — the monoecious, in 

 which the stamens and carpels are separate and borne on diff^- 

 erent parts of the same plant, as in corn and the pines, and the 

 dioecious, in which the two forms of flowers are still further 

 separated bv being borne on different individuals, as in willows 

 and poplars. While these are the most conspicuous, there are 

 numerous other forms among which may be mentioned per- 

 fect and staminate flowers on the same |)lant as in some um- 

 l)clli ferae, i)erfect and carpellate flowers on the same plant 

 as in Atriplcx and many Compositae, separate plants with 

 carpellate, staminate, or perfect flowers as in some maples, 

 separate plants witli carpellate and i)erfect forms as in Plant- 

 ago lanccolata, and separate plants with .staminate and per- 

 fect flowers as in Caltha. There are also all gradations from 



