SECTION 8.] 



INFLORESCENCE. 



77 



further growth must be from axillary buds developing into branches. If 

 such braucties are leafy shoots, at length terminated by single blossoms, 

 the inflorescence still consists of solitary flowers at the summit of stem and 

 branches. But if the flowering branches bear only bracts in place of ordi- 

 nary Icavtis, the result is the kmd of flower-cluster called 



219. A Cyme. This is comiuoaly a flat-topped or convex flower-cluster, 

 like a corymb, only the blossoms arc from terminal buds. 

 Fig. 211 illustrates the simplest cyme in a plant with opjjo- 

 sile leaves, namely, with three flowers. The middle flower, 

 a, terminates the stem ; the two others, b b, terminate branches, 

 one from the axil of each of the uppermost leaves ; and being 

 later than the niiddb one, the flowering proceeds from the 

 centre outwards, or is Ceiitriftigal. This is the opposite of 

 the indeterminate mode, or that where all the flower-buds are 

 axillary. If flowering branches appear from the axils below, 

 the lower ones are the later, so that the order of blossoming 

 continues ccnlrifuyal or, which is the same thing, descending, 

 as in Fig. 218, making a sort of reversed raceme or false ra- 

 ceme, — a kind of cluster which is to the true raceme just 

 what the flat cyme is to the corymb. 



220. Wiierever there are bracts or leaves, buds may be 

 produced from their axils and appear as flowers. Fig. 212 represents the 

 case where the branches, b b, of Fig. 211, each with a pair of small leaves 

 or bracts about their middle, have branched again, and produced the 

 branchlets and flowers c r, on each side. It is the continued repetition of 

 this which forms the full or compound cyme, such as that of the Laures- 

 tinus, Hobble-bush, Dogwood, and Hydrangea (Fig. 214-). 



221. A Fascicle (meaning a bundle), like that of the Sweet William 

 and Lychnis of the gardens, is only a cyme with the flowers much crowded. 



222. A Glomerule is a cyme still more compacted, so as to imitate a 

 head. It may be known from a true head by the flowers not expanding 

 centripetally, that is, not from the circumference towards the centre. 



223. The illustrations of determinate or ci/mose inflorescence liave been 

 taken from plants with opposite leaves, which give rise to the most regular 

 cymes. But the Rose, Cinquefoil, Buttercup, etc., with alternate leaves, 

 furnish also good examples of cymose inflorescence. 



224. A Cymule (or diminutive cynic) is either a reduced small cyme of 

 few flowers, or a branch of a compound cyme, i. e. a partial cyme. 



225. Scorpioidor Helicoid Cymes, of various sorts, are forms of de- 

 terminate inflorescence (often puzzling to the student) in which one half of 

 the ramification fails to appear. So that they may be called incomplete 

 cymes. The commoner forms may be understood by comparing a complete 



Fig. 213. Diagram of a simple cyme in which the axis lengthens, so as to take 

 the form of a raceme. 



