REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS OF PLANTS. 123 
of the pistil, but of other parts of the flower united with it. Thus, 
the calyx, which in some plants falls off during or immediately after 
flowering, is permanent in others, and remains attached to the fruit. 
The whole of a ripe fruit is often dry and hard, the softest part being 
the seed itself; but in other fruits, some part enlarges and becomes 
succulent, as in the apple, pear, plum, &c.; and a soft pulpy substance 
is formed in the interior of some fruits, as the gooseberry, grape, and 
- orange. When the fruit is ripe, it often opens to scatter the seeds, 
which takes place in a great variety of ways, some of them very 
curious. Soft fruits, however, fall off entire when ripe, and the seeds 
are set free by the decay of the soft parts, or when they are ‘eaten by 
birds or other animals, by which they are often carried to a distance 
so that the plant may be produced in a new situation. Among the 
provisions of nature for the dispersion of seeds are wing-like append- 
ages with which some are furnished, so that they are readily wafted 
about by the wind. The down attached to the seed of a thistle is an 
appendage of which this is the obvious use. It is called the pappus,! 
and assumes various forms. In the dandelion, it consists of a stalk, from 
the summit of which hairs radiate; and the pappus stalks produced 
from a head of flowers are so regular in length, that their hairs, spreading 
out and touching each other, form a beautiful globe. The pods of some 
plants, as the broom, burst with considerable force when ripe, so as to 
fling the seed away from the parent plant, and in a warm summer day, the 
sound of the cracking of the pods may be heard at a considerable distance. 
The seed-vessels of the poppy exhibit a very different provision for the 
accomplishment of the same object. They resemble little urns, which 
have a row of small holes around them, just under the top; and the seeds, 
which are very small and very numerous, are scattered through these 
holes when the stem of the plant is shaken by the wind, as pepper is 
shaken out of a pepper-box. The great seeds of the cocoa-nut palm are 
wafted by the waves and currents of the ocean from one tropical coast to 
another, protected from the water by their thick husk and firm shell. 
A fruit is generally formed from the pistil of a single flower, but the 
pistils of a number of flowers growing close together sometimes combine 
to form one fruit, as in the pine-apple, mulberry, and fig, the fleshy parts 
coalescing together. 
Different kinds of Fruits—There are so many different kinds of fruits, 
that a complete enumeration and description of them cannot be attempted 
here. Only a few of the most common and important can be noticed. A 
pear or an apple is a pome, so called from the Latin pomum, an apple, and 
is formed of two or more carpels. In the centre are cartilaginous or 
bony cells, containing the seeds, with a fleshy mass around them. A 
1 From Greek pappos, down. 
