136 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 



costly roses which droop in florist's windows are 

 brought to an artificial state by arduous culture, 

 and held in it by eternal vigilance. They are 

 propogated mainly by cuttings. Left to them- 

 selves for a while their blossoms would dwindle 

 and their pollen would intermix, till, in the course 

 of time, the rose-garden would be filled with a 

 generation of seedlings, showing what naturalists 

 call "reversion to type.'* Jacqueminots, American 

 Beauties, Bonsilenes and Catharine Mermels would 

 be sought there in vain. In their stead we should 

 find blossoms resembling some more, some less 

 closely, the ancestral wild roses from which all 

 sprang. 



It is from the wild-rose, queen not yet come to 

 her own (Fig. 29), that we shall best study the 

 differences between the flowers of dicotyledons 

 and those of monocotyledons. 



The wild rose has five sepals and five petals. 

 Its stamens are innumerable and the cells of the 

 rose-hip are partially or entirely fused together. 

 But the number five is more closely adhered to by 

 other members of the rose tribe. The apple- 

 blossom, for instance, has five sepals and five 

 petals, and apple-seeds are stored in five horny 

 pockets. The geranium tribe, the mallows, the 



