HOPS BLOSSOM. 163 



particular means it happens in each case to develop will 

 depend entirely upon the nature of its organization 

 before" it began to acquire the twining habit. In the vine 

 and the pea, tendrils readily grew out of branches or leaf- 

 stalks ; in the hop and the goose-grass, hooks were more 

 easily produced out of pre-existent hairs and asperities 

 still retained in their original form by other descendants 

 of the common ancestor. 



It is the flowers of the hop, however, that give it its 

 chief interest in the eyes of bibulous humanity ; and the 

 flowering mechanism is the part of its organization in 

 which the plant most widely departs from the norma of 

 its race. On the specialization of this part, in fact, it 

 has expended its chief attention. In pellitory a few of 

 the blossoms still remain hermaphrodite, with stamens 

 and ovaries in the same flower ; in most of the nettles 

 all the blossoms are separately either male or female, 

 though both kinds grow together on the same plant ; 

 but in the hop, as in the commonest stinging-nettle, the 

 two kinds of flowers are altogether divided, each indi- 

 vidual bine bearing on its clusters only one sort or the 

 other. The staminiferous blossoms are of small practical 

 interest : they consist simply of these inconspicuous 

 little yellowish-green panicles, hanging from the angles 

 of the upper leaves in this wild creeper, and looking 

 very much like their near relations the nettle flowers. 

 Still, they keep up something like the semblance of a 

 floral pattern, having each five small green sepals and 

 five curved stamens inclosed in their midst. The female 

 flowers, however, which grow at last into what we know 

 as hops, have become so degraded or so highly developed, 

 whichever you choose to call it, that their true nature 

 is now hardly recognizable at all. Their little florets 

 are closely crowded together in globular heads, look- 



