245 
blossoms. This tree is the flowering dogwood, and it 
tricks us somewhat in the same way as does the clover; 
for in this picture (Fig. 261) you see what nearly every 
one believes to be a single flower of the dogwood. 
And if some time ago you had been asked to give the 
building plan of the dogwood flower, you would have 
been pretty sure to say that the four large white leaves 
formed its corolla. 
Here you would have been quite mistaken; for in- 
stead of one large flower, the pic- 
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ture shows you a number of tiny <i 
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blossoms, so closely packed, and so i 
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surrounded by the four white leaves, 
that they look like only one blossom. 
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wood tree (only be sure to break it Net Fic. 261 
Try to get a branch from the dog- jj 
off where it will not be missed), and 
pull apart what looks so much like one large flower. 
First pull off the four white leaves. Then you will 
have left a bunch of tiny greenish blossoms. Look at 
one of these through a magnifying glass. If eyes and 
glass are both good, you will see a very small calyx, 
a corolla made up of four little flower leaves, four mites 
of stamens, and a tiny pistil,—a perfect little flower 
where you never would have guessed it. 
But all by themselves they would never be noticed: 
so a number of them club together, surrounding them- 
selves with the showy leaves which light up our spring 
woods. 
In Fig. 262 you see the flower cluster of the hobble- 
bush. 
