64 COHERENCE, ETC. OF STAMENS [CH. 



SO long as it is consistently employed throughout with the 

 new meaning science gives it, and the argument to the 

 contrary involves the vicious assumption that science is 

 to be approached through classics. Words like Ohm, 

 Boycott, and so on, are witnesses against this. I shall 

 accordingly adopt the older words Gamo- and Poly- 

 petalous, &c. 



jSIo doubt ease of pronunciation often decides which 

 of two words persists in the end e.g. why eleuthero- 

 petalous has not displaced the etymologically faulty term 

 polypetaloiis, or sympetalous the slightly easier word 

 ganwpetalous. 



Cohesion in the androecium, in the above sense of the 

 word cohesion, is not so common as in other whorls, bat 

 it occurs in Peas, Beans, Robinia, and other Leguminosa^ 

 (Fig. 19), the White Briony, Vegetable Marrow and other 

 Cucurbitaceae, and in Meliacese, Citrus, Oxalis, Malvaceae, 

 Lysimachia, &c., where the stamens cohere more or less 

 completely below during development. 



In some cases the anthers only are coherent, as in the 

 Sunflower and other Compositse, Lobelia, &c. : they are 

 slightly so also in Violets and in Solanum, but the union 

 is not very complete. 



It may be noted here that many cases occur where 

 the stamens are found in bundles, and are regarded as 

 coherent, but are really not so at all : development proves 

 that the groups are formed by the hranching of one or 

 more stamens during early growth. In the field, for the 

 practical purposes of Systematic Botany it is frequently 

 impossible to distinguish between truly coherent and 

 branched stamens, and it is the custom to ignore the 

 distinction of origin, and simply regard all bundles or 

 groups of stamens coherent. In reality, however, the 

 distinction is of theoretical importance. 



