CHAPTER XIV. THE SPERMAPHYTA. 



369 



dioecious. The staminate flowers consist of shield-shaped 

 scales compactly arranged along a lengthened axis, each scale 

 bearing on its inferior surface two or more pollen-sacs. These 

 often vary in number on the same plant. In the species of 

 Spruce and Pine, there are two placed side by side on the stami- 

 nal leaf, very much as in most of the higher flowering-plants ; in 



_ Fig. 570. — The Yew, Taxus baccata, showing flowers and fruit. A, branch, with ripe 

 fruit, f, about natural size. B, longitudinal section of female flower, showing terminal 

 ovule ; «, nucellus ; c, coat of ovule : a, rudiment of aril, which later grows up and 

 envelops the seed : />. a bract. Magnified about 20 diameters. C, Male flower, showing 

 terminal cone of staminate, shield-shaped scales, each with several pollen-sacs on the infe- 

 rior surface ; a, one of the pollen-sacs. Magnified. 



the common Juniper there are three roundish pollen-sacs ; in 

 Taxus baccata (see Fig. 570, C) there are from three to eight 

 and in the Araucarias of the southern hemisphere, there are a 

 large number of long cylindrical ones pendent from the lower 

 surface of the shield-shaped scales. The staminal scales are 

 nearly always smaller and of a different color from the ordinary 



