COMPOSITE 



CHAPTER XII. 



SOCIAL FLOWERS. 



Botanists do not fully agree as to the rank of certain 

 plant families, but the first place is generally accorded to 

 tfee family Composite, which includes the sunflower, dai- 

 sies, tidy -tips, the thistle, dandelion and the like. 



Find a sunflower that has been open for several days 

 and examine the darker central part. It is easily seen that 

 it consists of very many slender, goblet-shaped, yellow flow- 

 ers tipped with brown or purple. These closely packed 

 flowers have not a green calyx; they could have no use for 

 one. In the sunflower, each calyx is reduced to two or 

 three scales. The corolla has its five petals united nearly 

 to the tip; perhaps you will find traces of honey at the base 

 of the tube. To study stamens and pistil, you need to 

 split open the little flower. The five, dark anthers are 

 united into a tube, and they shed their pollen inward. The 

 pistil consists of an ovary, which is below the rest of the 

 flower, and one style, which is split at the top, exposing 

 two rough, moist surfaces, the stigmas. Perhaps you can 

 see that the upper part of the style is covered with little 

 bristles; under the microscope it looks like a brush for 

 cleaning bottles or lamp chimneys. So we will remember 

 that in every tiny flower this style, like a bottle brush, fits 

 closely in the tube formed by the anthers, and that the in- 

 ner surface of the anther tube is covered with pollen. 



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