THE FLOWERS OF BRAZIL 



have been poor in colour compared with what she is to-day, and 

 anyone who could have seen the earth during this stage of its evo- 

 lution would have gazed with astonishment at the emergence of the 

 colours which began to paint the landscape and make it suddenly 

 bright and cheerful. 



Since at the end of the eighteenth century the Brandenburg 

 botanist Sprengel discovered the "secret of Nature" as regards the 

 production of flowers, the scientists have sought the solution of 

 riddle after riddle relating to the 

 structure of flowers. The result of all 

 their researches may be summed up in 

 the axiom: The coloured and scented 

 flowers were evolved by the plants for 

 the sake of the insects. The flowers 

 contain the sexual organs of the plants, 

 which, as in the animals, are male and 

 female. But in the plants both organs 

 are commonly contained in a single 

 blossom, which is therefore called an 

 androgynous flower. The male repro- 

 ductive substance, in the animals known 

 as semen, is situated, in the form of 

 "flower-dust" or pollen, on the stamens 

 (Fig. 13), which emerge from the 

 corolla of the flower, surrounding a 

 little staff* or style (or several such), 

 which is known as the pistil. The pistil 

 is a part of the female organs. It begins 

 with the stigma, the place where the 

 pollen is received, and ends, in the base of the flower, in a swelling, the 

 ovary or ovaries, which contains the ovum or ova. On fertilization the 

 stamen touches the stigma, and a grain of pollen forces its way through 

 the pistil into the ovary, combining with the ovum. The ovum thus 

 fertilized, which is now surrounded with some sort of husk, or even 

 a shell, becomes the seed of the plant, which either falls out of the 

 withered ovary, germinating in the soil and becoming a new plant, 

 or remains in the ovary, which proceeds to grow into a fruit. This 

 fruit is gathered or picked up and eaten by a bird or animal; the 

 seeds or stones fall out of it, or pass through the digestive system, 

 and are then sown by the natural action of the bowels. 



So long as the structure of the flower is as I have described, it 



231 



Fig. 13. — Passion - flower or 

 Maracuja. Surrounded by 

 petals, sepals, and a coronet 

 of filaments. The ovary rises 

 in the centre, prolonged into 

 three pistils; around it stand 

 the five stamens with their 

 anthers 



