82 2 The yoitrnal of Forestry. 



The fruit of tlie Buckthorn is intermediate between a berry and a 

 nuculanium, since the calyx grows round it and ahnost encloses it 

 but it is commonly and less strictly called a drupe. 



The well-known dry, winged, superior fruits of maples, sycamores, 

 ash, elm, and birch, are known as samaras. The wings are produced 

 from the ovary, one flower in the maples commonly producing two 

 samaras, one for each carpel. These winged fruits must be carefully 

 distinguished from those of the hornbeam, which have a wing-like 

 adherent bract and form tlie winged seeds of conifers ; for though the 

 function of the wing-like organ is the same in each case, viz., to 

 scatter the seed away from the parent tree, and in some cases, by its 

 spiral curvature and sensibility to moisture (hygroscopicity), to bury 

 the seed in the soil, the function of an organ whether in plant or 

 animal is the most misleading of all guides to its structural nature, its 

 developmental history. 



The pods or legumes of peas, beans, vetches, furze, laburnum, and 

 all the great group Lcgum,inosce, need only be mentioned as formed 

 from one carpel, and dehiscing down both its front and back margins, 

 the dorsad and vcntval sutures of botanists. 



The great tribe Rosacea^ has very various fruits. Those of the 

 plums, cherries, and cherry laurels, as of almonds and peaches, are 

 what are commonly called " stone-fruits," i. e., true druiies, superior, 

 formed from one carpel, and having the outer part of the fruit, or 

 cpicarp, fleshy, whilst the inner, or endocarp, is stony. For the 

 " stone " must not be thought to be the seed : it is equivalent to the 

 " core " of an apple, — the seed, the equivalent of the " pip," being the 

 " kernel." The fruit of the blackberry and raspberry is a collection of 

 small drupes or drupC'ls, and are to be distinguished from the in- 

 frutescence of the mulberry, in which, as in the pine-apple, tlie fruits 

 of a whole cluster of flowers or inflorescence are united together into 

 one " false fruit " by succulent floral envelopes. Such aninfrutescence 

 is termed a sorosis. The carpels of the strawberry ai'e the little dry 

 " pips " on the surface of the fleshy receptacle, which corresponds to 

 the central knob on which the similar dry carpels or achenes of a 

 buttercup are placed, or that in the centre of a raspberry. The fruit of 

 the rose, or " hip," is the same thing turned outside in, the hairy 

 achenes being enclosed in the scarlet receptacle. This is consequently 

 an inferior fruit, as also are those of the apple, pear, service, mountain 

 ash, and hawthorn, in which we have a bony or parchment-like endocarp, 

 surrounded by a fleshy epicarp, usually of five confluent carpels, 

 crowned by the calyx. This is termed dip)ome. 



The so-called seed of caraway, carrot, and other UmheUifercG, is one 

 carpel or mericarp (half-fruit) of a dry, inferior fruit of two carpels, 

 called a crcmocarp. The fruits of the ivy, the dogwood, the guelder 



