Cultural FiJ'st Principles. 823 



rose, and elder, being inferior, are true berries ; vvbilst tbe small florets 

 wbich make up the inflorescence of daisies, dandelions, thistles, colts- 

 foot, and all the great family Comiiosika, are each succeeded by a small 

 fruit, also inferior, crowned with the well-known " down," or pappus, 

 which serves it in lieu of wiags. This fruit is called a " cypsela," and 

 contains one seed, being, in fact, an inferior acheue. 



Each female flower in the catkin of a willow or poplar is succeeded 

 by a capsule containing seeds, with tufts of hair to perform the function 

 of dispersal. 



The glans or nut of the beech, the hazel, the hornbeam, the Spanish 

 chestnut, and the oak, is an indehiscent fruit with, a dry or horny 

 pericarp or exterior, a superior calyx, and persistent bracts or cupule. 

 It is important to distinguish between the fruits of the Spanish 

 chestnut and their spiny investment of abortive branchlets, and the 

 brown seeds of the horse-chestnut with the spiny pericarp of the 

 capsule that encloses them. The fruit of the walnut, which, when unripe, 

 is pickled whole, is inferior, and having a fleshy epicarp and bony 

 endocarp (the "shell"), is comparable to the pome, from which it 

 difi'ers in being dehiscent. The planes have a superior nut-like fruit, 

 crowned with a persistent style, and surrounded with a whorl of stifl" 

 hairs at its base ; whilst that of the alder, similarly forming one of 

 a persistent catkin, globular in the plane, cone-like in the alder, is also 

 similar in structure, being dry, superior, and indehiscent, — in short, a 

 wingless samara. 



After mentioning that the fruit of the box is a capsule, we have only 

 to describe our coniferous types. As these plants have no true ovary 

 or closed carpellary leaves, their so-called fructification consists of a 

 collection of naked seeds, not of fruits. The scales which form the 

 cone, whether branches or carpels, are woody in pines, generally with 

 two winged seeds at the base of their inner surface, and in arlor-vitce and 

 juniper are few in number, less cone-like in arrangement, fleshy, and 

 almost enclosing tlie unwinged seed. 



These few notes of structure and terminology are designed only as a 

 guide in the practical study of fruits which is essential to a thorough 

 knowledge of v^oodcraft. 



{To he continued.) 



