i /8 Oranges and Lemons of India. 



a store of food and a protecting shell are needed. 

 The seed bud does not germinate while it is still 

 attached to its parent leaf, or carpel, and without such 

 protection, it would perish before it came under con- 

 ditions which would enable it to start into independent 

 life. These seed buds, with their little store, are the 

 peas we cook.* 



The leaf of the Bryophyllum calycinum, however 

 illustrates a stage of fruit development anterior to 

 that of the closed peArpod. It is a fruit which has not 

 yet evolved the habit of folding itself up into a pod 

 for the protection of its buds while young, but remains 

 expanded and produces its peas, or seed buds, at the 

 axillae of its crenations. 



Having premised the foregoing, we shall now, per- 

 haps, be better able to understand the composition of 

 the fruit of the Citrus say that of an orange. I had 

 stated before that the orange leaf is an expansion of 

 the stem bark. In the Citrus, from the normal axillae 

 of the leaves two or more buds are produced, which 

 either become regular fully- developed branches, or 

 remain abortive and become what are called the spines 

 of the Citrus. 



The flower is nothing but a transformed branch, 

 either coming out of the axilla of an ordinary leaf or 

 from that of an abortive leaf, usually called a bract. 

 This transformed branch, or flower, in the orange, con- 

 sists of several whorls of transformed leaves, viz., the 

 calyx whorl, the corolla whorl, the stamina whorl or 

 whorls, and the ovary whorl or whorls, f The latter, in 

 the Citrus fruit, I take to consist ordinarily of two 



* I am aware this is elementary matter, but the general reader 

 may, nevertheless, not know it. 



t Tt is considered that the parts of fruits in general are transformed 

 leaves, called carpels. 



