14 THE STORY OF PLANT LIFE 
PLANTS AND THEIR FLORAL STRUCTURE. 
A plant normally consists of root, stem, or shoot, 
leaf, branches, flower and fruit, with seeds, 7. ¢. a 
flowering plant. A cryptogam of the highest type 
cannot be said to possess a flower, though the cone 
with its sporophylls may be regarded as an in- 
florescence as in Lycopodiacee. 
In the classification of plants, as in their life- 
history, the flower plays a larger part than the rest 
of the structures, so that a description of its parts 
and arrangement is given here as being essential to a 
proper understanding of the life-history of plants. 
The inflorescence includes the shoots which are 
called short shoots or flowers. It is of a different 
type in different plants. In the raceme the main 
shoot grows undivided as a main axis, and lateral 
flowers are borne upon the branches, each branch 
terminating with a flower. 
The flowers at the base are the oldest, and the 
order of opening is centripetal. 
The type of inflorescence is called indefinite. This 
is the case in Crucifers. 
When the branches bear racemes, not single 
flowers, a compound raceme or panicle, as in 
grasses, is formed. 
When the flowers upon the raceme are unstalked 
or sessile the inflorescence is termed a spike. There 
may be simple or compound spikes. A familiar 
illustration is the Mullein. Compound spikes occur 
