Chapter XXXIV. 



High Types and Low Types of Flowers. 



There have now been passed in review the twenty-six orders 

 of two seed-leafed plants which agree in showing no fusions of 

 the petals of the flower into corolla tubes. Indeed, some of 

 them have no petals. But in such forms as produce flowers 

 with petals, the typical honeysuckle tube or morning-glory 

 funnel is not developed. A number of differences in flowers 

 and fruits have been recorded, and it may not be amiss, before 

 passing to the consideration of succeeding orders, to note briefly 

 the general law under which flowers vary from lower types to 

 higher. There is a distinction, pretty clear in the mind of the 

 botanist, between lower or simpler sorts of flowers and higher 

 or more complex kinds. The distinction does not, however, 

 consist in showiness, size, color, perfume or abundance. Con- 

 sidered botanically, some large and beautiful blossoms are lower 

 in type than other tiny, inconspicuous flowers that might almost 

 escape the observation of the amateur. 



In order to understand the distinctions which have weight 

 with botanists it is necessary to remember from what sort of 

 structures flowers are believed to have developed. A proto- 

 type of all flowers is the pine cone an aggregate-body is fore- 

 shadowed even among flowerless plants, notably by the club- 

 moss cones. It will be recollected that in club-mosses the 

 ends of many of the stems gathered their leaves more closely 

 together than elsewhere, and on the upper side of each of such 

 leaves was placed a little spore-containing sac. The cone of 

 the club-moss is an axis upon which spore-bearing leaves are 

 distributed. As has already been suggested, in the discussion 

 of the club-mosses, the primitive type of spore-bearing leaf had 

 also, as part of its duty in the plant economy, the starch-making 

 work of an ordinary leaf. But by a division of labor, some 



