326 



HUTCHINSON'S POPULAR BOTANY 



developed a true foliage leaf instead of a bract in the involucre. A third 

 specimen (a flower of the Enchanter's Nightshade Circcea lutetiana) 

 appears with a portion of its stigma transformed into the anther of a 

 stamen, and a stamen assuming the character of a pstal, while, in place 

 of another of its petals, two sepals are developed ! Not less remarkable 

 is the figure of a Peach-flower, whose organs exhibit a stead} r gradation 

 from petals to foliage leaves ; and farther on in the volume we meet with 

 an abnormal Rose, entirely devoid of petals, and with sepals which seem 

 to have been trying ard to produce a serrated margin. The stamens 



of this flower are normally developed, 

 but the pistil (if pistil it may be called) 

 is a curiosity, the style being elongated 

 into a green and healthy-looking shoot, 

 bearing some two or three dozen ordin- 

 ary leaves ! 



The " monster " flowers which have 

 come under our own notice are not 

 so singular as those figured in Dr. 

 Taylor's remarkable articles, but they 

 serve no less to illustrate Goethe's 

 law. The first figure (fig. 393) repre- 

 sents a flower of Wistaria, from which 

 the coloured petals have been removed. 

 In this example the abnormally de- 

 veloped organs are the stamens, one 

 of which has a small leaf-shaped 

 purple petal growing out from the 

 centre of the style ; while another 

 has developed a similar petaloid 

 organ in place of the anther-lobes. 

 In the second figure (fig. 394) we 

 have a "monstrous" flower of Begonia 

 (B. octavia], whose outer petals or 

 rather sepals have been metamor- 

 phosed into green leaves, with midrib, veins, etc. 



In many species of the genus Clematis, the sepals are petaloid that 

 is to say, they are coloured like true petals, while the petals are absent. 

 The former are spoken of collectively as the perianth, this being the name 

 applied to the floral envelopes of a flower when calyx and corolla are not 

 easily distinguished. It would be well, perhaps, to keep exclusively to 

 this use of the term, rather than apply it in a loose way to the floral 

 envelopes of any and every flower. In the figure of Clematis ccerulea 

 (fig. 398), the six petal-like organs (really sepals) constitute the perianth. 

 Probably no flower better illustrates the truth we are considering than 



FIG. 396. SNAPDRAGON. 



A portion of the stigma and style, showing pollen- 

 grains on the former putting forth tubes and pene- 

 trating the style. 



