THE FLOWER AND ITS PARTS oF 
Pint, has all its spike of flowers enclosed by a broad, 
closely folded, green, leafy structure, which is a true 
bract. The compound flowers, such as daisies and 
thistles, have an envelope at their base of green, 
dark green or black, which looks like a calyx, but is 
really composed of bracts. The parsley family, many of 
them, have a somewhat similar arrangement at the base 
of their spreading groups of flowers, though in their case 
the bracts stand out stiffly, ike the rays of a conventional 
sun, and do not form the close coating that we find in 
the daisy or the thistle. In either of these two cases 
the circle of bracts is called the zmvolucre. Another 
example of bracts which you have often seen is the cup 
of an acorn, which is only a fused collection of bracts. 
The bracts are hardly, perhaps, actually parts of the 
flower, but they are so closely connected with it that they 
deserve to be taken first. 
We now come to the calyx, which holds the flower 
within it when budding, and supports it when full-grown. 
It is composed of another ring of modified leaves, each 
of which is called a sepal. These sepals are generally 
ereen, as in the buttercup, but are sometimes brilliantly 
coloured, as in the marsh-marigold. They form the first 
circle, protecting the essential parts within. Sometimes 
the sepals are all fused into one complete tube, or ring, 
with a toothed edge, just showing the original structure, 
but more often they are distinct and of varying number. 
Within the calyx comes the second circle, called the 
corolla. The separate leaves which compose it are called 
petals (a short @, by-the-by), from a Greek word, pétallos, 
meaning a thin sheet of beaten metal. It is this circle 
which gives the chief beauty to the flower in almost 
every case, for it is the chief seat of the various devices 
H 
