SUPPLEMENT 



the trees in mass, up to the development of the fruit. Bud protection 

 can be easily discerned ; the flowers and fruit should be studied as they 

 appear. The stone fruits, apricots, peaches, plums, etc., are classi- 

 fied as drupes ; apples, pears and quinces, as pomes. These two 

 groups are usually included in the rose family. If the teacher looks 

 forward to some work in classification, the children should make and 

 preserve drawings showing the parts of these flowers, also of straw- 

 berry, raspberry or blackberry flowers when they are accessible. 

 Except for occasional variations, such as usually occur in cultivated 

 plants, these flowers all have five sepals, five petals and many stamens, 

 all situated on the calyx. The pistils vary ; the ovary of the drupe 

 group is superior and consists of one carpel, the pome group has five 

 inferior ovaries imbedded in the receptacle, while the so-called berries 

 have many small pistils situated on a convex receptacle. The pollin- 

 ation of the flowers should be noted ; they usually seem capable of 

 self pollination, still they provide much honey, and obviously adver- 

 tise this by color and fragrance. Experiments seem to show that 

 many trees of this family fruit better when cross pollination is 

 effected. It is said that there are varieties of pears that must be pol- 

 linated not only from another tree, but from a different variety. Our 

 wild blackberries, and some kinds of cultivated strawberries, have 

 frequently only staminate or pistillate flowers, and so require cross 

 pollination. 



The subject of the development and distribution of fleshy fruits 

 should not be missed later on. By comparing flower and young fruit 

 it is seen that the ovary wall of a drupe becomes the edible part. 

 The ovary walls of pomes are simply the five chartaceous pods that 

 contain the seeds ; botanists do not agree as to whether the fleshy 

 part we eat is altogether receptacle, or both receptable and calyx. 

 Obviously the juicy part ot the strawberry is the greatly enlarged 

 receptacle, what are commonly called seeds being entire pistils. But 

 the receptacle of the blackberry remains white and tough ; the juicy 

 part of the fruit is the mass of ovaries, each ovary having become a 

 drupe. The receptacle of the raspberry remains on the bush when 

 we pick the united drupes. So these berries are not berries at all in 

 the botanical sense, a berry being a several seeded ovary, pulpy 

 throughout, such as the elderberry, cranberry, currants, grapes, 

 oranges, tomatoes, etc. 



Until their seeds are mature all of the fleshy fruits are inconspicu- 

 ous and have some bitter or possibly poisonous qualities ; then by 

 chemical changes the juices become sweet and well flavored. 

 Obviously the taste, together with the color and fragrance, are devices 



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