ANALYSING ITS PARTS. 143 



which is represented by a miniature tube, yellow at the sum- 

 mit, and of a greenish white at the base, the said tube being 

 the union, or combination, of the tops or summits forming the 

 central gem, the gilded button, the drop of gold. You may 

 readily note this arrangement in the larger variety of daisy, 

 the Chrysanthemum leucanthum of Linnaeus, two Latinised 

 Greek words which signify, literally, "golden-blossomed 

 white flower." 



If you doubt whether each of these tiny tubes be a flower, 

 you have only to analyse them with the assistance of your 

 ever-useful lens. The analysis of one will suffice ; for all the 

 others resemble it. Now, with your penknife, split the tube 

 throughout its entire length : you will thus lay bare all the 

 parts which enter into the composition of a veritable flower, 

 commencing with the most conspicuous. Through the mag- 

 nifying glass you can see five stamens, free as regards their 

 short filaments, but united by their elongated anthers; a 

 characteristic which gives name to the great family of the 

 Synantheracece, of which family our daisy is an honoured 

 member; a bifid (i.e., cloven in two) style traversing the 

 middle of the anthers, which form for it a kind of sheath 

 (see Fig. 31, a); a monopetalous, tubular, and obscurely 

 bilabiated (two-lipped) corolla, inserted at the summit of an 

 unilocular (one-lobed) ovary, which is attached to the calyx 

 (see Fig. 31, b). In these tiny flowers, then, which we call 

 in Latin flosculi, in French fleurons, in English florets, 

 nothing is deficient. As they are shaped like tubes, we call 

 them, by way of distinction, tuluUfloral. 



