254: FUNCTIONS OF STAMENS AND glSTILS. 



erect ones. The barren blossoms stand above the 

 fertile ones in Carex, Coix, Arum, &c., that the 

 pollen may fall on the stigmas. This is the more re- 

 markable, as the usual order of Nature seems in such 

 plants, as well indeed as in compound, and even um- 

 belliferous flowers, to be reversed, for the pistils are 

 invariably central, or internal, in every simple flower, 

 and would therefore, if drawn out into a monoeciou s 

 spike, be above the stamens. 



Many curious contrivances of Nature serve to bring 

 the anthers and stigmas together. In Gloriosa, Andr, 

 Repos. t. 129, the style is bent, at a right angle from the 

 very base, for this evident purpose. In Saxifraga, and 

 • Parnassia, Engl. Bot. t. 82, the stamens lean one or 

 two at a time over the stigma, retiring after they have 

 shed their pollen, and giving place to others ; which 

 wonderful oeconomy is very striking in the garden Rue, 

 Rutagraveolens, whose stout and firm filaments cannot 

 be disturbed from the posture in which they may happen 

 to be, and evince a spontaneous movement unaflfected by 

 external causes. The five filaments of the Celosia, 

 Cock's-comb, are connected at their lower part by a 

 membranous web, which in moist weather is relaxed, 

 and the stamens spread for shelter under the concave 

 lobes of the corolla. When the air is dry, the contrac- 

 tion of the membrane brings them together, to scatter 

 their pollen in the centre of the flower. The elastic fila- 

 ments of Parietaria, Engl. Bot. t. 879, for a while re- 



