144 Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



grasse? — inconspicuous little green flowers, with three 

 calyx-pieces, three petals, six stamens, and either six 

 or three ovaries. Here, too, the ovaries are at first 

 united into a single pistil (as it is technically called), 

 though they afterwards separate as they ripen into 

 three or six distinct little capsules. One of our 

 British kinds, the marsh arrowgrass, has almost 

 reached the lily stage of development ; for it has 

 three calyx -pieces, three petals, six stamens, and 

 three ovaries, exactly like the true lilies ; but it falls 

 short of their full type in the fact that its pistil 

 divides when ripe into separate capsules, whereas the 

 pistil of the lilies always remains united to the very 

 end ; and this minute difference suffices, in the eyes 

 of systematic botanists, to make it an alisma rather 

 than a lily. In reality, it ought to be regarded as a 

 benevolent neutral— a surviving intermediate link 

 between the two larger classes. 



The specialisation which makes the true lilies thus 

 depends upon two points. In ,the first place, all the 

 parts are regularly symmetrical, except that there are 

 two rows of stamens to each one of the other organs : 

 the common formula being three calyx-pieces, three 

 petals, six stamens, and three ovaries. In the second 

 place, the three ovaries are completely combined 

 together into a single three-celled pistil. The advan- 



