258 LUTHER BURBANK 



Thus, for example, are produced such double 

 flowers as the cultivated rose, dahlia, and the 

 chrysanthemum. To the human eye, these are 

 things of beauty but from the standpoint of plant 

 economy they must be regarded as travesties of 

 flowers, since they are far less able and often 

 wholly incapable of producing seed. 



But it is perhaps a somewhat more philo- 

 sophical view of the flower to consider it as a 

 mechanism developed about the all-essential cen- 

 tral organ, the pistil. 



This, the female organ of the plant, consists, 

 in the developed form, of a basal structure, the 

 ovary, containing the ovules or embryo seeds, 

 and a more or less protuberant style at the end of 

 which is the stigma that receives the fertilizing 

 pollen. 



Considered as to its origin, the pistil is in 

 effect a modified bud. Everyone is aware 

 that individual buds of a plant may have the 

 property of being able to reproduce the entire 

 plant. The pistil is a modified bud each em- 

 bryo seed of which, when fertilized, has the 

 same potentiality. 



By the most wonderful miracle of the organic 

 world, this infinitesimal structure is enabled to 

 epitomize all the possibilities of a future plant, 

 of predetermined size and form and habit. 



