CHAPTER VI 



THE FLOWER 



All fruits are aftergrowths of flowers. If any mischance 

 befalls the flowers, as an untimely frost or freeze, all hope for 

 fruit for that season is extinguished. The botanist classifies 

 plants chiefly in accordance with their flowers, but pomologists 

 have paid almost no attention to the flowers of the several fruits. 

 Yet it is hardly too much to say that all hardy fruits could be 

 classified by their flowers. This statement is made to emphasize 

 the point that the flower could be used in classifying fruits much 

 more than it is, admitting at once that classification by fruit 

 alone is better for the pomologist when the fruits suffice. The 

 organs of flowers and their functions should be studied by fruit- 

 growers, also, because of the great importance of hybridization 

 in improving fruits; and because sex, with its problems of 

 sterility and fertility, is modifying the planting of all fruits in 

 every part of the country. 



65. Flowers distinguished from shoots and leaves. — In origin, 

 form, and relationship of parts, a flower is a modified shoot and 

 its parts are modified leaves. Sometimes it is difficult to tell 

 which is shoot and which is flower, which is foliage and which 

 floral leaf. The distinction can be best made, at least for the 

 purposes of pomology, by the functions of these organs. Shoot 

 and green leaf, and stem and root as well, serve to maintain 

 the life of the individual which bears them ; they are vegetative 

 organs. The function of the flower is to reproduce a new 

 generation of plants similar to that upon which the flower is 

 borne ; the inner floral leaves are reproductive organs. Whether 

 an organ is concerned chiefl}^ with growth or with reproduction 

 constitutes the plainest dividing line between foliage and floral 

 leaf. 



66. The parts of a flower and their arrangement. — In the 

 floral shoot the uppermost leaves are closely arranged in whorls ; 



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