212 GLIMPSES INTO PLANT-LIFE 



botanically we shall have to widen our ordinary 

 conception of the term. 



There is probably no part of a plant so difficult 

 to understand as its fruit, and this difficulty is due 

 to those many changes which I described in my 

 last chapter. A very general definition of fruit is 

 that it consists of the ripened ovary, and this will 

 be found to be correct in a great number of cases, 

 but this term is not exactly wide enough to 

 express the general formation of all fruit. In 

 some cases it is composed of the ripened ovary with 

 the parts of the stalk or the original flower, en- 

 larged or incorporated in the structure of the fruit, 

 but in other specimens we find the ovary, although 

 present, very little enlarged, and playing but a 

 minor part in the ultimate character of the mature 

 fruit. 



No fact seems so emphatic to the observant 

 botanist as that which upsets his artificial rules 

 and classifications of plants and the parts of plants. 

 We say, for instance, that fruit is the ripened ovary, 

 and yet directly we leave our books and go out to 

 study botany in the fields and woods, we find a 

 large group of fruits perfectly innocent of any such 



