Flowers 



their queens of beauty to flowers, and priests used them 

 in church services, and the guests at convivial enter- 

 tainments were always decorated with wreaths and 

 garlands. 



To the botanist, however, such an apparently simple 

 question as "What constitutes a flower?" raises 

 abstruse and almost metaphysical controversies which 

 are either intensely attractive or entirely abhorrent, 

 according to his own particular personal magnetism or 

 the botanical ways in which he has been brought up. 



It is perhaps the most difficult question in the whole 

 great science of botany, and will undoubtedly be 

 earnestly discussed in 2009 A.D. 



But there is a much more interesting and practical 

 question, which is, how did flowers manage, when once 

 formed, to vary and multiply into the exquisite forms 

 and lovely colours in the world's flora of to-day ? 



A flower may be compared to a foliage bud which 

 has never elongated. The uppermost leaves have been 

 modified to produce the egg cells or female germ cell ; 

 the stamens bearing the pollen, of which the grains are 

 sperm cells (male), are also modified leaves, and the 

 petals and sepals are also in all probability modified 

 leaf-like organs. 



It is quite likely that the petals of many flowers were 

 stamens in a previous ancestry, but on the whole it 

 seems most reasonable to assume that both petals 

 and sepals are for the most part modified leaves, 

 devotees of the flower and changed in appearance 

 accordingly.** 



* The carpels or egg cell leaves are greatly altered in form but often remain 

 green. A pea pod is a typical carpel; wallflower has two carpels; lilies 

 have three carpels; geraniums have five carpels; buttercup has many free 

 carpels arranged spirally and is nearer the primitive type. The ovule or 

 young seed which contains the egg cell is supposed by Worsdell 2 to be a three- 



IO9 



