280 DECOMPOSITE ORGANS. CHAP. I. 



and dissected in the foregoing manner, the rudi- 

 ments of its future products may be also distinctly 

 perceived long before the period of its evolution. 

 Ledermuller is said to have dissected a bud of the 

 Horse-chesnut, containing both leaf and flower, in 

 the winter, of about the size of a Pea, in which, 

 after removing the scales, he found four branch- 

 leaves covering a flower-spike consisting of upwards 

 of sixty florets. In the month of March 181O, I 

 opened up a bud of the same plant which had riot 

 yet burst its scales. The scales, which were about 

 fifteen or sixteen in number, being removed, were 

 found to contain one pair of opposite leaves now 

 laid bare, the divisions of which were closely mat- 

 ted together with a fine down. The leaves upon 

 being opened were also found to contain within 

 them a flower-spike, consisting of not less than a 

 hundred florets closely crowded together, each en- 

 veloped by its downy calyx, which when opened 

 discovered the corolla, stamens,, and pistil, distinct ; 

 the rudiments of the future fruit being also dis- 

 cernible in the ovary. 



The petals of the corolla before their evolution 

 are wrapped up in the flower-bud like the young 

 leaves of the plant in the leaf-bud ; and are also 

 found to exhibit similar varieties of involution, 

 which seem to have been first observed and described 

 by Grew in his Anatomy of Plants.* 



* Anat. of Plants, book. i. chap. v. 



