XIV INTRODUCTION. 



82. PalecB, Pales, or Chaff, arc tho inner bracts or scales in Composites, Gramineee, 

 and some other plants, when of a thin yet stiff consistence, usually narrow and of a 

 pale colour. 



83. Glumes are the bracts enclosing the flowers of Cyperacece and Graminece. 



§ 8. The Flower in General. 



84. A complete Flower (15) is one in which the calyx, corolla, stamens, and pistils 

 are all present ; a perfect flower, one in which all these organs, or such of them as are 

 present, are capable of performing their several functions. Therefore, properly speak- 

 ing, an incomplete flower is one in which any one or more of these organs is wanting ; 

 and an imperfect flower, one in which any one or more of these organs is so altered as 

 to be incapable of properly performing its functions. These imperfect organs are said 

 to be abortive if much reduced in size or efficiency, rudimentary if so much so as to 

 be scarcely perceptible. But, in many works, the term incomplete is specially applied 

 to those flowers in which the perianth is simple or wanting, and imperfect to those in 

 which either the stamens or pistil are imperfect or wanting. 



85. A Flower is 



dichlamydeous, when the perianth is double, both calyx and corolla being present 

 and distinct. 



monochlamydeous, when the perianth is single, whether by the iinion of the calyx 

 and corolla, or the deficiency of either. 



asepalous, when there is no calyx. 



apetalous, when there is no corolla. 



naked, when there is no perianth at all. 



hermaphrodite or bisexual, when both stamens and pistil are present and perfect. 



male or staminate, when there are one or more stamens, but either no pistil at all 

 or an imperfect one. 



female or pistillate, when there is a pistil, but either no stamens at all, or only 

 imperfect ones. 



neuter, when both stamens and pistil are imperfect or wanting. 



barren or sterile, when from any cause it produces no seed. 



fertile, when it does produce seed. In some works the terms barren, fertile, and 

 perfect are also used respectively as synonyms of male, female, and hermaphrodite. 



86. The flowers of a plant or species are said collectely to be unisexual or diclinous 

 when the flowers are all either male or female. 



monoecious, when the male and female flowers are distinct, but on the same plant. 

 dioecious, when the male and female flowers are on distinct plants. 

 polygamous, when there are male, female, and hermaphrodite flowers on the same 

 or on distinct plants. 



87. A head of flowers is heterogamous when male, female, hermaphrodite, and neuter 

 flowers, or any two or three of them, are included in one head ; homogamous, when all 

 the flowers included in one head are alike in this respect. A spike or head of flowers 

 is androgynous when male and female flowers are mixed in it. These terms are only 

 used in the case of very few Natural Orders. 



88. As the scales of buds are leaves undeveloped or reduced in size and altered in 

 shape and consistence, and bracts are leaves likewise reduced in size, and occasionally 

 altered in colour ; so the parts of the flower are considered as leaves still further altered 

 in shape, colour, and arrangement round the axis, and often more or less combined with 

 each other. The details of this theory constitute the comparatively modern branch of 

 botany called Vegetable Metamorphosis, or Homology, sometimes improperly termed 

 Morphology (8). 



89. To understand the arrangement of the floral parts, let us take a complete flower, 

 in which moreover all the parts are free from each other, definite in number, i.e. always 

 the same in the same species, and symmetrical or isomerous, i. e. when each whorl con- 

 sists of the same number of parts. 



90. Such a complete symmetrical flower consists usually of either four or five whorls 

 of altered leaves (88), placed immediately one within the other. 



The Calyx forms the outer whorl. Its parts are called sepals. 



