VII. 1 



PISTIL. 



93 



carpel. Ranunculus, Nelumbium, Guatteria, and Unona 

 also have apocarpous pistils, consisting, however, not of a 

 single carpel, but of numerous distinct carpels. 



Fig. 68. ['"lower of Sacred Lotus (Neitimbiut>i)_ in vertical section, showing the 

 carpels separately immersed in the top-shaped receptacle. 



A comparison of any one of the carpels of Ranunculus 

 with the pistil of the Pea will afford satis- 

 factory evidence that in the latter you have 

 but a solitary carpel. In Ranunculus you 

 observe that the stigmas are all oblique to 

 the carpels which bear them, and that they 

 all radiate, as it were, from the centre of 

 the flower. A like obliquity may be noticed 

 in the Pea, the single carpel which it 

 possesses being the only one developed of 

 a whorl of five. Sometimes one or more 

 of the carpels suppressed in the Pea are 

 developed in other species which are allied to it in genera] 

 structure. 



Fig 



69. Longitu- 

 dinal section of 

 fruit-carpel of Ra- 

 nunculus, showing 

 obliquity of the 

 stigma. 



