ITS KINDS. 297 



united by their inner face but separating entire at maturity, 

 which constitute the fruit of Umbelliferse, takes the name of 

 CREMOCARP (Lat. Cremocarpium) ; and the halves are called 

 MERICARPS. These names it may sometimes be convenient to 

 use ; yet it is not advisable to have special names for the fruits 

 of particular families ; and mericarp is here synonymous with 

 carpel. For dry fruits in general (or such as become dry) 

 which are composed of two or more carpels, and which at matu- 

 rity split up or otherwise separate into two or more closed one- 

 seeded portions, an appropriate recent name is that of SCIIIZOCARP. 

 The component carpels of such a fruit were long ago named Car- 

 cerules (carceruli, little prisons) by Mirbel. 



572. Fleshy Fruits, which from their texture are natural!}' 

 indehiscent, may be either fleslry throughout, or with a firm rind 

 or shell, or fleshy externally and hard or stony internally. Of 

 the latter, the t}-pe is 



573. The Drupe or Stone Fruit proper (Fig. 639), that of the 

 cherry, plum, and peach. True drupes are of a single carpel, 

 one-celled and one-seeded 



(or at most two-seeded) , in 

 the ripening of which the 

 outer portion of the pericarp 

 becomes fleshy or pulpy, and 

 the inner stony or crustace- 

 ous, i. e. divides into sarco- 

 carp and putamen. (541.) 

 But the name is extended to 

 pericarps of similar texture resulting from a compound pistil, 

 either of a single cell, as in Celtis, and (by abortion) in the olive, 

 or of two or several cells, as in Cornus, Rhamnus, &c. The several 

 pericarps of the aggregate blackberry and raspberry are diminu- 

 tive drupes or DRUPELETS. 



574. Small drupes are often confounded with berries, and the 

 stone or stones taken for seeds. Especially is it so in drupes 

 or drupaceous fruits of more than one cell, ripening into separate 

 or separable hard endocarps or stones, each filled by a seed. 1 

 Bearberries (Arctostaphylos) and Huckleberries (Gaylussacia) 

 are good illustrations of this. The seed-like endocarps of this 



1 The term Acinus, the original name of such a berry as a grape, has been 

 used in descriptive botany for a small drupe or drupelet, and the ripened 

 carpels of Rubus have been termed acini or acines, but without discriminating 

 them from berries. 



FIG. 639. Vertical section of a peach. 640. An almond; in which the exocarp, the 

 portion of the pericarp that represents the pulp of the peach, remains juiceless, and at 

 length separates hy dehiscence from the endocarp. or shell 



