184 BRITISH PLANTS 
the scales which bear them enlarge and become woody. 
Being closely packed together in a cone, and overlap- 
ping, they cover the young seeds completely. By the 
time the latter are mature and ready for dispersal, . 
the hard woody scales have become very dry and gape 
apart, thus allowing the seeds to be blown out by the 
wind. 
True fruits are developed from the ovary alone. Where 
other parts of the flower contribute to its formation, the 
fruit is said to be false. 
In classifying plants, we pointed out that two methods 
were possible—the morphological and the biological. The 
same is true of fruits. We may base our classification 
either upon the nature and development of the structures 
involved in the formation of the fruit (morphology), or 
upon the purposes which these serve (biology). Thus, all 
the succulent fruits form a single biological group, serving 
to attract birds, and the dispersal of the contained seeds 
is effected by their agency. But morphologically they 
differ very widely, the fleshy part being variously derived. 
In the grape the entire wall of the ovary or pericarp 
forms the succulent portion of the fruit ; in the plum only 
a part of the pericarp is succulent, the rest forming a stone 
which encloses the seed ; in the hip, haw, strawberry, and 
apple it is the receptacle—the portion of the flowering 
axis upon which the flower rests—which forms the fleshy 
part of the fruit. There are thus many morphological 
ways of attaining the same biological end, and in a 
biological classification the end attaimed forms the basis 
of grouping, and not the morphological means employed 
to bring it about. 
Morphological Classification of Fruits. 
In a morphological classification the difficulty is to select 
such morphological features or characters which will 
enable us to separate fruits into natural and obvious 
groups. For example, let us attempt to base a classifica- 
tion upon the number and cohesion of the carpels, thus : 
1. Fruits derived from an ovary of one carpel : 
(a) One-seeded. 
(b) Many-seeded. 
