as: 
TRUE NATURE OF FLORAL ORGANS. 153 
sepals and petals in such flowers as the white water-lily. In 
this flower there is a remarkable series of intermediate steps 
ranging all the way from petals, tipped with a bit of anther, 
through stamens with a broad petal-like filament to regular 
stamens, aS 1s shown in Fig. 156, E, F, G, H. The same 
thing is shown in many double roses (Fig. 157). In com- 
pletely double flowers all the essential organs are transformed 
by cultivation into petals. In the flowers of the cultivated 
double cherry the pistils occasionally take the form of small 
leaves, and some roses turn wholly into green leaves. 
Summing up, then, we know that flowers are altered and 
shortened branches: (1) because flower-buds have the same 
JON 
Fic. 137. — Transitions between Petals and Stamens in a Rose. 
kinds of origin as leaf-buds ; (2) because all the intermediate 
steps are found between bracts on the one hand and stamens 
on the other ; (3) because the essential organs are found to 
be replaced by petals or even by green leaves. 
188. Mode of Formation of Stamens and Pistils from 
Leaves. — It is hardly possible to state, in a book for begin- 
ners, how stamens stand related to leaves. 
The simple pistil or carpel is supposed to be made on the 
plan of a leaf folded along the midrib until its margins touch, 
hke the cherry leaf in Fig. 61. But the student must not 
understand by this statement that the little pistil leaf grows 
1**The anther answers exactly to the spore-cases of the ferns and their allies, 
while the filament is a small specialized leaf to support it.” For a fuller statement, 
see Potter’s Warming’s Systematic Botany, pp. 236, 237. 
