432 THE ROSALES 



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. Resales, 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 tjie large variety of our cultivated fruits and 

 flowers 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- 

 monly in fives and cyclic (Fig. 310, A) though the spiral ar- 

 rangement still persists in nearly every family of the order. The 

 most distinguishing feature of the group is seen in the adhesion 

 of the receptacle to the calyx, thus lifting up the corolla and 

 stamens about the ovary (perigynous flowers) and this growth 

 also frequently results in an adhesion to the ovary (epigynous 

 flowers). The simple forms of flowers that appear in many of 

 the families are very suggestive of the Ranales, the sporophylls 

 being free and often spirally arranged. Thus, in the live-for- 

 ever (Sediim), we have a flower that has always been cited as 



