414 THE ROSALES 



Many products of great commercial value are derived from 

 various members of this order. Opium, from which morphine 

 and other alkaloids are obtained, is the dried latex obtained from 

 the incisions of the unripe capsules of the Turkish poppy. The 

 majority of these plants contain acrid or peppery juices that 

 render certain parts of the plant or their seeds of value as spices, 

 oils, foods, etc. Many of them are biennial, forming a close 

 rosette of leaves the first year and flowers and fruit the second. 

 By cultivation an abnormal development of one part or another 

 of the plant has been induced. This feature is well illustrated 

 in the cabbage, where the elongated stem of the wild plant has 

 become shortened by cultivation and covered with fleshy leaves, 

 forming a large bud or head. Brussels sprouts are a modifica- 

 tion of the cabbage in which the stem becomes more elongated 

 and covered with numerous small heads. The great variety of 

 kales are really headless cabbages in which the leaves remain free 

 from one another, assuming a variety of forms. The cauliflower 

 is a variety of the cabbage in which the inflorescence has been 

 transformed into a fleshy mass of tissue, and in the kohlrabi the 

 stem becomes swollen and herbaceous. The turnip is a related 

 species of the cabbage genus in which the underground portion 

 of the plant is modified. Radish, cress, horse-radish, caper, spices 

 and oils of mustard, etc., are other products of the order, as well 

 as many cultivated flowers, as the wallflower, stock, mignon- 

 ette, etc. 



144. Rosales, the Rose Order. — This enormous order, com- 

 prising over 14,000 species, is better known than any other, not 

 only because of its great array of common field plants, but espe- 

 cially because of the large variety of our cultivated fruits and 

 (lowers that belong to it. The cultivated currant, blackberry, 

 strawberry, apple, pear, cherry, peach, plum, pea, bean, hydran- 

 gea, syringa, rose, spiraea, wistaria, laburnum, as well as many 

 native trees and shrubs, as the tulip tree, sycamore, witch-hazel, 

 locusts, etc., belong to the rose order. 



These plants may be looked upon as the most typical of the 

 Choripetalae, just as the Liliales were the most representative of 

 the monocotyledons. The parts of the flower are more com- 



