GYNCECIUM IN ANGIOSPEEMS. 



263 



487. As the placenta of a simple pistil belongs to the two 

 united margins of the carpellary leaf, there is naturalty a double 

 row of ovules, one to each margin. If the leaf- 

 margins which are turned inward in the ovary be- 

 low to bear the ovules are turned outward above to 



receive the pollen (see Fig. 531), then the typical 

 stigma should also be double or bilamellar. So it 

 is seen to be in such carpels as those of Fig. 528, 

 531533, and indeed in very many stigmas of this 

 class. Such division, or even a greater bifurcation 

 of a monocarpellary stigma into two lobes or half- 

 stigmas, is not anomalous. 



488. The ovary of a simple pistil should be 

 unilocular, that is, should have a single cavity 

 or cell (loculus) , although, as will soon be seen, 

 the converse does not hold true. Yet this cell in 

 certain instances becomes bilocellate, being divided 

 by a growth or intrusion from the back into two 

 locelli. This occurs more or less in the larger 

 number of species of the Leguminous genus m 

 Astragalus, and the mode is shown in Fig. 534. 



489. Compound or Syncarpous Pistil. 1 This consists of two. 

 three, or a greater number of carpels coalescent into one bod}-. 

 A true compound pistil represents a whorl (in the simplest case 

 a pair) of carpels united into one body, at least as to the ovary. 



490. The coalescence of a capitate or spicate mass of carpels 

 or simple pistils of the same flower, imbricately heaped on the 

 torus, as in Magnolia (Fig. 648) and Liriodendron, cannot 

 property be said to form a compound pistil. This heap of 

 pistils may be called a SOREMA. 



491. Morphologically, a compound pistil, as to the ovary, may 

 be a pair or a circle of closed carpels or simple pistils brought 

 into contact, and the contiguous parts united : this is illustrated 

 in Fig. 535-538. Or it may be formed of a whorl of open car- 

 pellary leaves, joined each to each by the contiguous margins, 



1 The terms apocarpous and syncarpous for pistils, the first of separate, the 

 second of combined carpels, were introduced by Lindley. They have little 

 advantage over the terms simple and compound. Moreover, the word 

 syncarp or syncarpium had been appropriated to a sort of fruit of the class 

 now called multiple, formed by the coalescence of several flowers, and also 

 to that of a heap, head, or spike of carpels more or less cohering at matu- 

 rity, as in a blackberry, or confluent in the flower, as in Magnolia. 



FIG. 534. Ovary or forming legume of Astragalus Canadensis. transversely divided, 

 to show the false partition which, intruded from the back, divides the simple cell into 

 two half-cells or locelli. 



