213 



THE POPULAE EDUCATOR 



In past ages these tree-ferns must have been amongst the 

 most numerous of vegetable productions. Coal, we need hardly 

 say, is well known to be nothing more than the remains of 

 vegetable substances, so long buried under great pressure in the 

 earth that they have changed to the condition in which we at 

 present find them. Notwithstanding the change of quality, yet 

 in many cases the original shape of the vegetable has not under- 

 ' gone alteration. So that a person sufficiently acquainted with 

 Botany can readily tell the kind of plant from which any speci- 

 men of coal under consideration has been formed. 



Although fronds are the substitutes for leaves in ferns and 

 several other cryptogamic plants, nevertheless these organs are 

 not the universal substitutes; but the general complexity of 

 cryptogamic plants, the microscopic nature of these organs, and 

 the comparatively limited acquaintance with this division of the 

 vegetable world, render it undesirable to state much concerning 

 them in a series of papers like these, in which so many tribes of 

 flowering plants claim our notice. 



SECTION XII. ON THE EEPEODUCTIVE OEGANS OF 

 PLANTS: THE FLOWEE AND ITS APPENDAGES. 



Having written what is necessary concerning the nutritive 

 parts of plants, we shall now de- 

 scribe their reproductive members, 

 the flower and its appendages. It 

 would be folly, indeed, to describe 

 formally what is meant by a flower, 

 but the purposes to which a flower 

 is designed in the economy of vege- 

 table nature will require our 'atten- 

 tive consideration. Without flowers 

 there could be no fruit; without 

 fruit there can be no seed; and 

 without the latter the greater num- 

 ber of vegetables could not be 

 multiplied. The reason, then, for 

 denominating flowers the reproduc- 

 tive organs of plants will be mani- 

 fest. To state this fact, that flowers 

 are the reproductive portions of a 

 plant, is very easy. To demon- 

 strate, however, the elaborate means 

 by which the functions of reproduc- 

 tion are discharged is very difficult. 

 Indeed, the laws affecting the mul- 

 tiplication of animals and vegetables 

 are so similar in many respects, 

 that many of the terms employed 

 in this department of Botany are 

 borrowed from the sister studies of 

 animal anatomy and physiology ; 

 and without some preliminary know- 

 ledge of these sciences it would be 

 next to impossible to make the 

 reader comprehend the intricacies of vegetable reproductions. 



We therefore shall not attempt to deal with these intricacies, 

 but shall content ourselves by saying that all plants most pro- 

 bably, certainly all evidently-flowering or phsenogamous plants, 

 possess sexes, and these sexes are usually in the same plant, in 

 the same flower of the plant. Occasionally, however, the two 

 sexes are on different flowers, and sometimes on different 

 plants. We may, therefore, popularly say, that the greater 

 number of flowers contain both gentlemen and ladies ; but occa- 

 sionally, on some plants, the gentlemen and ladies have flowers, 

 each sex to itself; and occasionally, again, the gentlemen mono- 

 polise all the flowers on one plant, and the ladies all the flowers 

 on the other. When the two sexes reside in two sets of flowers 

 on one plast, then such a plant is said to be monoecious, from two 

 Greek words, /J.OVQS (pronounced mon'-os) and OIKOS (pronounced 

 oi'-fcos), signifying ""one house;" the plant, we suppose, being 

 regarded as a house, and the flowers as chambers in the same. 

 W}ien, however, the males all reside in the flowers of one plant, 

 and the females in all the flowers of another, then such plants 

 axe said to be di&cious, or "two-housed," the reason of which 

 will be obvious. 



SECT. Xni. ANATOMICAL EXAMINATION OF A FLOWEE. 

 Pleasing objects of contemplation as flowers are, beautiful to 



look at and agreeable to smell, the botanist is obliged frequently 

 to destroy them before he can make himself acquainted with the 

 peculiarities of their structure ; that is to say, he is obliged to- 

 cut or pull their various organs from their attachments ; this 

 operation is termed dissection. Presently, then, we shall have 

 to dissect a flower and learn its various parts. As a preliminary 

 to this examination, however, it will be necessary that the learner- 

 should make himself acquainted with some general terms em- 

 ployed in this department of Botany. 



First of all, then, the manner in which flowers are arranged- 

 upon any plant is termed the inflorescence of that plant. By 

 this term botanists understand not merely the flower itself, but 

 various appendages to the flower; in short, the term inflorescence- 

 has a very wide signification. 



SECTION XIV. MANNEE IN WHICH FLOWEES AEE 

 ATTACHED. 



The attachment of flowers to the parent stem usually takes-- 

 place through the intervention of a little branch-like appendage, 

 to which the term peduncle, or occasionally pedicel, is applied.. 

 The reader will therefore remember that a peduncle or pedicel 

 stands to a flower in the same relation as a petiole to a leaf. It 

 is also called the primary axis of" 

 inflorescence, and the flower-stalks 

 which spring from it are called, 

 the secondary, tertiary, etc., axes. 

 These pedicels or flower-stalks are 

 arranged on various plants in dif- 

 ferent ways, and thus give rise to 

 various terms indicative of the na- 

 ture of inflorescence. The word 1 

 peduncle is derived from the low 

 Latin pedunculus, a little foot, while- 

 pedicel is derived from the Latin 

 pediculus, which has the same mean- 

 ing. Both words are diminutives 

 of the Latin pes, a foot. 



The inflorescence, or mode of" 

 flowering, is said to be definite or 

 terminal when the primary axis is 

 terminated by a flower. When the 

 original stem goes on growing in 

 a straight line, giving off as it pro- 

 ceeds little flower-shoots or second- 

 ary axes of various degrees oir 

 either side, but does not terminate 

 in a flower, then the term indefinite- 

 inflorescence is applied; the pro- 

 priety of which term will be ob- 

 vious. The term axillary ia some- 

 times given to this condition of 

 inflorescence. If the reader glance- 

 for an instant at Fig. 60 in the 

 opposite page, he will be at 

 no loss to comprehend what is meant by indefinite or 

 axillary inflorescence. The reader will here please to ob- 

 serve the little leaf-like things from the axillae (or junctions, 

 with the primary axis) of which the flower-peduncles spring- 

 in this example. Such leaf-like appendages are frequently 

 to be seen attached to the peduncles of many flowers. They 

 are called bracts, from the Latin bractea, a thin plate of metal, 

 and although their usual appearance is green like a leaf, yet they 

 sometimes undergo very strange modifications. Thus, the pine- 

 apple, which we discovered long ago to be no fruit, is, in reality,, 

 nothing more than an assemblage of fleshy bracts, and the sealer 

 of the fir-cone is nothing more than hard leathery bracts. la 

 proportion as bracts are developed nearer to a flower, so doea 

 their natural green colour give place to the colour of the 

 flower itself. Occasionally the flower actually springs from 

 the upper surface of a bract, as in the case of the linden. 

 (Fig. 61). 



Sometimes bracts unite at the base of each group of flowers, 

 and on the same plane, as, for example, we find it in the 

 carrot. This association of bracts gives rise to what botanists 

 term the involucrum, a Latin word, which is derived from volvo^ 

 to wrap or roll, and which means anything that serves to wrap 

 or cover. f 



Under Mie classification indefinite inflorescence are compre- 



TREE FERN. 



