126 BOTANY 



arisen, which, however, is comparatively unimportant. 

 The important consideration is the need of the plant; 

 the various ways in which it is supplied may advan- 

 tageously occupy our thoughts rather than the duty of 

 finding a special name for each variety. It has, how- 

 ever, become the custom to speak of a fruit -which has 

 been developed from the carpel or carpels only of a 

 flower as a true fruit. One into whose composition some 

 other part of the flower enters, usually some part of the 

 floral axis, is known as a spurious fruit, or pseudocarp. 

 The distinction is in many cases very difficult to make 

 and from our point of view is quite unnecessary. Such 

 fruits as the pine-apple and fig, which are the product of 

 whole inflorescences and not of single flowers, may be 

 distinguished as aggregated fruits. 



Among the succulent fruits the most prominent is 

 the berry, which exists in several varieties. It is seen 

 in its simplest form in the grape, while varieties of it are 

 illustrated by the gooseberry and the orange. The 

 hard parts of this mechanism are the walls of the seeds 

 the berries contain. Another succulent fruit is the 

 drupe, in which the middle layer of the fruit wall be- 

 comes pulpy while an inner layer becomes hard and 

 constitutes the stone. A collection of very small 

 drupes upon a dry receptacle is met with in the different 

 kinds of raspberry and blackberry. 



Succulent fruits in which the growing axis of the 

 flower is concerned are met with in two conspicuous 

 forms. The strawberry has a very succulent convex 

 axis on which the fruits appear as small hard bodies, 

 containing, however, the seeds inside their hard coats; 

 in the apple and its allies the succulent axis has become 

 concave and has grown up round the carpels and enclosed 

 them. This fruit is called a pome. The carpels them- 

 selves are cartilaginous in texture, or in some forms 

 bony as in the hawthorn. 



