314 HUTCHINSON'S POPULAR BOTANY 



was given in a former chapter ; and if we place side by side with Rafflesia 

 the stalked inflorescence of the celebrated Lilium giganteum, we have a 

 contrast indeed. A flower-stem of one of these Lilies, cut from a living 

 plant in the Sunningdale Nursery in July, 1879, is preserved in No. 1 

 Museum at Kew. The circumference of the pedicel is eleven and a half 

 inches, its height thirteen feet ! Truly a Brobdingriagian flower-stem. 



A stalk which supports a solitary flower, or the primary stalk of an 

 inflorescence, is called a peduncle; while the branches or secondary stalks 

 are known as pedicels. The stalk of Herb-paris, one of the flowers that we 

 were looking at a moment ago, is an example of a peduncle ; so is the 

 primary stalk of the Lily of the Valley (Convallaria majcdis), while its 

 slender branches, curving with the weight of the dainty little bells, are 

 pedicels. The portion of the floral stem (peduncle) which, in this plant, 

 bears the stalked flowers, is the rachis. Rachis is the Greek word for 



" spine," and besides being the term 

 used in anatomical science for the 

 vertebral column of animals, is used 

 for many things which suggest a 

 resemblance to the spine, as the shaft 

 of a feather, the stalk of the frond in 

 Ferns, the axis of a compound leaf, 

 and (as we have just seen) the axis of 

 an inflorescence. 



The Lily of the Valley is an ex- 

 tremely useful plant for an object- 

 lesson. Who is not familiar with its 

 pensile beauty? It is a favourite 

 FlG 381 HERB-PARIS flower under cultivation, and one of 



Solitary and terminal flower. the HlOSt SOUgllt after of wild-flowers. 



The plant needs some seeking, too, 



for it loves to hide from sight in shady glens, covering its nodding white 

 bells with its large and glossy leaves. 



You perceive that the leafless peduncle springs directly from a sub- 

 terranean stem or root-stock a rhizome, to use the botanical term. On 

 this account the inflorescence is called a scape, and the plant itself a 

 scapigerous herb. The Primrose, Cowslip, and Oxlip (Primula vulgaris, P. veris, 

 and P. elatior) also offer familiar examples of scapigerous herbs. 



Notice, further, that the pedicels of the Lily of the Valley spring from 

 the axils of what appear to be minute leaves a fact of importance, as 

 similar leaf-like forms are found on most branched inflorescences. They 

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

 usually green, but in certain plants as the Flowering Dogwood (Gornus 

 florida) and the celebrated Edelweiss (Leontopodium alpinum) they are white 

 or coloured like the petals of flowers, and are then called petaloid. In Poinsettia 



