56 



THE GARDEN OF EARTH 



standing out in a circle, and you might suppose them 

 to be the petals of a single flower. 



But the golden centre is not made of stamens, and 

 the outer rays are not ordinary flower-petals. We talk 

 of the Daisy as " a flower," yet really it is not one 

 flower only. It is a whole bunch or collection of tiny 

 flowers or " florets," as such minute blossoms are called. 

 And only in a sense can we speak of the whole as one 

 flower. 



Those tiny, yellow, stamen-like things in the centre 



are florets ; each having 

 its own corolla and 

 stamens and pistil. 

 And the white rays 

 surrounding are florets 

 also, different in shape, 

 yet each again having 

 its own corolla and 

 stamens and pistil. 

 Altogether there are 

 between two and three hundred of them in a single 

 Daisy. 



The florets have no green sepals of their own, however. 

 Instead of this, there are little, green, sepal-like leaves 

 surrounding the entire collection of yellow and white 

 florets. These we might call the " calyx," though the 

 right word for them is Involucre — a word something 

 hke envelope. They really do " envelop " or cover up 

 the young Daisy bud. 



A Daisy is a Composite Flower, for it is composed 

 or made up of many florets, all growing together and 

 behaving like a single flower. It belongs to the " Com- 



SECTION OF FLO WEB HEAD OF DAISY. 



