Chapter VI. 



THE ROSE FAMILY. 



This family is a large and important one, not only from 

 the interest it bears for the student, but on account of 

 the beautiful flowers and useful fruits produced by some 

 of its members. Its natural home is the Northern Hemi- 

 sphere, where it has developed numerous forms of great 

 variety. In Australia it is very poorly represented with 

 native forms, but in addition to these we have amongst our 

 wild flowers some introduced plants that have made them- 

 selves quite at home. In this chapter it will be well to 

 examine some of our cultivated plants as well. 



The Eose family is one of the most difficult for the 

 young student to master. It contains shrubs and herbs, 

 but none large enough to be called trees. The habit of 

 the plants, the details of their flowers, and structure of 

 the fruits are so various that there appears to be no one 

 feature we can seize hold of as a mark. Yet the family 

 is natural; that is, there appears an evident likeness in 

 character amongst its members by which we recognise their 

 distinction from all other families. This is one of the 

 great troubles in endeavouring to learn the classification 

 of flowering plants we have to depend so much on judg- 

 ment and so little on definition. 



There are three principal feature we may note as com- 

 mon. The carpels are in nearly every case one-seeded and 

 free from one another. The stamens are numerous, and 

 together with the five free petals are inserted on a cup-like 

 expansion of the thalamus, and not close under the pistil, 

 as in Buttercup. This expansion is small in Plum, but 

 very large in Hose. We shall note its extraordinary 

 development in the fruit of Apple. 



We have no native Rose; those flowers which look very 

 rose-like we shall find belong to the Saxifrage and adjoin- 

 ing groups. But Sweet Briar is quite as wild as our 

 farmers care for. We will examine the structure of its 

 flower. The base of the flower is a round or oblong hollow 

 body. In older works it was the custom to call this and 

 all similar developments in other flowers the calyx tube. 

 In the present day we consider it is not part of the calyx, 

 but an expansion of the flower-stalk, and is called the floral 

 tube. In some few instances there may be doubt on this 



