IV 



PLANT LIFE 20 



wards give them out in a different form, but they digest the 

 food drawn up by the roots and elaborate it so as to render 

 it fit for the nourishment and the building up of all the 

 tissues of the plants. 



THE FLOWERS are those parts of the plant concerned in 

 the formation of fruit, and they are often remarkable for 

 their beauty and their fragrance, or their peculiar construc- 

 tion. A typical flower consists of four distinct series of or- 

 gans, arranged in a circle round the axis of the flower stalk. 

 This arrangement may easily be seen in the flowers of the 

 orange or the lime. 



On examining one of these flowers carefully, five thick, 

 small green organs, like stunted leaves, will be noticed on 

 the outside and at the lowest part of the flower. This outer 

 series of organs is called the calyx, and the separate parts 

 are called sepals. In the case of the orange flower, then, 

 the calyx consists of five sepals. Inside the calyx, and 

 similarly arranged, is the corolla composed of five leaf-like 

 organs, white in colour and possessed of a delicious per- 

 fume. These are called petals, and so the corolla is described 

 as being composed of five petals. Within the corolla comes 

 a series of peculiarly shaped organs, called stamens and 

 bearing at their summits yellow, hollow bodies, the anthers, 

 filled with a fine dust-like substance. The fourth and last 

 series of organs are called carpels, and collectively, the car- 

 pels form the pistil. Each carpel consists of a hollow lower 

 part called the ovary, in which are found one or more 

 minute bodies called ovules. The carpels are separate in 

 many flowers, but in the orange they are joined together and 

 become one body, which consists of the small round unde- 

 veloped orange, terminating in a club-shaped prolongation 

 called the style. At the end of the style there is a sticky 

 body, the stigma, and very frequently some of the dust from 

 the anthers may be found adhering to it. 



This dust, which is called pollen, acts when applied to the 



