28 The Romance of Wild Flowers 
the under-side of the pollen-grain, and its outer skin 
would be broken by a shoot from its interior. This 
; shoot would pierce the substance of 
the stigma and force its way between 
the minute cells of which the style 
is built up—one might liken the 
process to the root of a tree finding 
its way between the brickwork of a 
wall, from top to bottom. Throughout 
its course the pollen-shoot sets up an irritation in the 
cells it touches, which causes the plant to fill them up 
with sugar or other nutritive material, upon which 
the pollen-tube feeds as it goes along. At length it 
reaches the ovary, and there searches for a seed-ege. 
Each seed-egg is pierced with a minute pore called 
the micropyle, or little gate, and through this little 
gate the pollen-tube passes, and mingles with the 
contents, thus giving a stimulus which leads to the 
formation of an embryo, which develops into a seed 
capable of producing a Rose-plant like that by which 
the Rose-flower was produced. Several pollen-grains 
would perform this office simultaneously and an equal 
number of seed-eggs would be fertilised. The petals 
having performed their functions would drop off, and 
the stamens and stigmas would wither. The recep- 
tacle-tube would share the excitement of the embryos, 
and would grow larger and more fleshy in order to 
provide room for the enlarging seeds in their carpels, 
and its outer coat would become bright red and 
clossy. 
To hark back to the freshly expanded Dog Rose: 
the stamens appear to be all stretching away from 
the stigmas as though not desiring too close an ac- 
Section of Rose 
