320 



HUTCHINSON'S POPULAR BOTANY 



Photo 6y] 



FIG. 387. BLEEDING HEART (Dicentra spectabilis). 

 A beautiful example of the indefinite inflorescence is furnished by its long racemes. 



plant. Small surfaces of colour are always rendered more conspicuous if 

 placed close to one another ; and there can be little doubt that bees and 

 other winged insects, which are known to play an important part in the 

 cross-fertilization of plants, are attracted more readily to flowers which 

 club together, so to speak, than to those which maintain a solitary exist- 

 ence. We offer this remark in passing, but the subject will be before us 

 again by-and-by, when there will be opportunity for considering the facts 

 more fully. 



Thus far we have been considering flowers in clusters (i.e. inflorescences), 

 and little has been said of the flower as an individual ; though this is 

 really our main subject. What is a flower? Popularly the term is applied 

 to the delicate and gaily coloured leaves or petals on a plant ; but as many 

 true flowers have no petals at all, it is easy to see that the popular con- 

 ception is defective. Nor is it sufficiently exact to say that a flower is 

 " that part of a plant which subserves the purpose of reproduction." 

 Have we not already seen that leaves, roots, and stems may subserve a 

 like purpose, being capable of producing buds which, whether they remain 

 attached to the parent plant or are severed from it, are unquestionably 

 new individuals? A far more satisfactory definition is furnished by Pro- 

 fessor George Henslow, who calls the flower " a living machine for making 

 seed in order to reproduce the plant and so keep up a succession of its 

 kind." Let us add that this mechanism is acted upon, ?io from without, like a 

 loom, but from ivithin, by the vital force which resides in the protoplasm. 



