296 THE FRUIT. 



nut, and the like. The nut is often enclosed or surrounded by 

 a kind of involucre, termed a Cupule ; such as the cup at 

 the base of the acorn, the bur of the chestnut, and the leaf- 

 like covering of the hazel-nut. The name Glans 

 (sometimes Gland in English) is technically applied 

 to such nuts, this being their classical Latin name. 

 568. The fruit of the Walnuts and Hickory is 

 apparently a kind of drupaceous nut, or something 

 intermediate between a stone fruit and a nut. But 

 certain monstrosities give reason for supposing that 

 the seeming exocarp (541), which in Hickory 

 hardens and at maturity dehisces hi four valves, 

 is of the nature of an adnate involucre. The cocoanut is a sort 

 of fibre-drupaceous nut. 



569. Nutlet, or in Latin form NUCULE (Nuculd), is sometimes 

 superfluously employed in a literal sense, as a diminutive nut. 1 

 Of late it has acquired a good and fairly legitimate use as the 

 name of the seed-like, or rather akene-like, closed parts or lobes, 

 of crustaceous or other hard texture, into which certain bilocular 

 or plurilocular pericarps separate at maturity, i. e. for the seg- 

 ments of a schizocarp, 571, which resemble akenes. 2 These are 

 sometimes carpels, sometimes half-carpels, as in Verbena, also 

 in Borraginaceae and Labiatae (in which the segments are greatly 

 separated in the ovary), and sometimes, as in Nolana, they are 

 portions of compounded carpels which have been exceedingly 

 multiplied by chorisis. 



570. There are complete transitions between dry nutlets, with 

 a thin and herbaceous epicarp, and the pyrence (574) or stony 

 inner portion of such carpels when drupaceous or composing a 

 drupe of two or more stones. It is therefore a hardly incongru- 

 ous and very convenient use which extends the term nutlet to 

 include these small seed-like stones also, as, for example, to 

 those of Holly, Bearberry, Hawthorn, and the like. 



571. The pair of achenium-like or often samara-like carpels, 



1 Nut and akene, between which there is no fixed distinction, will cover 

 this ground. The fruit of Cyperaceae, for instance, is truly an achenium, 

 if this name is ever to be used (and it now commonly is) for any other than 

 a monocarpellary fruit. It is often termed a nut, sometimes a nutlet, and 

 by a late writer, Boeckler, a caryopsis. 



2 Cocci (sing. Coccus, from a Greek word for kernel) is another name for 

 fruit-carpels, or separating lobes of a dry pericarp, as well for dehiscent ones 

 (of Euphorbia) as for indehiscent. Hence such lobed or partible fruits 

 are said to be dicoccous, tricoccous, &c., according to the number of lobes or 

 carpels. 



FIG. 638. Acorn (nut) of White Oak, with its cup, or cupnle. 



