234 



THE FLOWER. 



leaves into sepals, from sepals into petals, and from the latter into 

 stamens, or even into pistils. We trace the typical leaf forward 

 into the floral envelopes, and thence into the essential organs of the 

 blossom. Now if these organs be, as it were, leaves developed in 

 peculiar states under the controlling agency of a power which has 

 overborne the ordinary forces of vegetation, they must always have 

 a tendency to develope in their primitive form, when the causes 

 that govern the production of blossoms are interfered with. They 

 may then reverse the spell, and revert into some organ below them 

 in the series, as from stamens into petals, or pass at once into the 

 state of ordinary leaves. That is, organs which from their position 

 should be stamens or pistils may develope as petals or floral leaves, 

 or in the form of ordinary leaves. Such cases of retrograde meta- 

 morphosis frequently occur in cultivated flowers, and occasionally 

 in some spontaneous plants. 



429. Thus we meet with the actual reconversion of what should 

 be a pistil into a leaf very frequently in the 

 double garden Cherry, either completely 

 (Fig. 269), or else incompletely, so that the 

 resulting organ (as in Fig. 270) is something 

 intermediate between the two. The change 

 of what should be stamens into petals is of 

 common occurrence in what are called double 

 and semi-double flowers of the gardens ; as 

 in Roses, Camellias, Carnations, &c. When 

 such flowers have many stamens, these disap- 

 pear as the supernumerary petals increase in 

 number ; and the various bodies that may be 

 often observed, intermediate between perfect 

 stamens (if any remain) and the outer row of petals, from im- 

 perfect petals with a small lamina tapering into a slender stalk, to 

 those which bear a small distorted lamina on one side and a half- 

 formed anther on the other, plainly reveal the nature of the 

 transformation that has taken place. The garden Columbine often 

 affords beautiful illustrations of this kind. Carried a step farther, 

 the pistils likewise disappear, to be replaced by a rosette of petals, 

 as in double Buttercups. It is wrong to suppose, however, that the 



FIG. 269. A small leaf in place of a pistil from the centre of a flower of the double Cherry. 

 270. An organ intermediate between a leaf and a pistil, from a similar flower. 

 FIG. 271. Leaflet of a Bryophyllum, developing buds along its margins. 



