18 VEGETABLE ORGANOGRAPHY. 



Juncus and others are frequently found in capitula, 

 which are disposed in a contracted panicle. Thus may 

 not only these primitive dispositions be either simple or 

 branching, but the branch itself may present a dispo- 

 sition sometimes resembling, at others differing from, 

 that of the central axis. 



A second difference which goes to prove the little 

 real importance of these divisions, in appearance so dis- 

 tinct, is, that it happens in plants with separate sexes 

 that the male and female flowers often present different 

 dispositions ; thus, the male flowers of the Indian Corn 

 are in branching spikes, the female in simple ones ; 

 the males of the Fir in catkins, the females in cones ; 

 the males of the Hop in panicles, the females in a kind 

 of cone or spike ; the flowers of Hura crepitans, although 

 springing from the same axil, are disposed in two man- 

 ners, — the females solitary, the males in a spike, &c. 

 Generally, in all cases of inequality of the two sexes, the 

 male flowers are more scattered and with longer pedi- 

 cels, and the female more sessile and compact. 



Section III. 



Of Terminal Inflorescences, or those with a Centrifugal 



Evolution. 



In this second class of inflorescence, the stem or prin- 

 cipal branch, instead of being prolonged indefinitely in 

 a straight line, and only bearing the flowers laterally, is 

 found terminated by a flower, which, instead of arising 

 from the axil of a bract, is found to have at the base of 

 its pedicel two opposite, and sometimes several verticil- 



