STRUCTURE OF FLOWERS. 07 



Section V. 

 Of the Pistil or Carpels. 



The pistil, taken collectively, is evidently the female 

 organ of the flower, since we see it after flowering 

 changed into fruit and containing the seeds. It has for 

 a long time been considered as a single organ ; but its 

 structure, and especially that of the fruit which succeeds 

 it, only becomes intelligible when it is considered in the 

 same manner as all the other organs of the flower, that is 

 to say, as composed of elementary organs, sometimes free, 

 at others cohering together, and which I call Carpels. 



The Carpels spring from the centre of the flower, and 

 are arranged in different manners, of which the following 

 are the principal, viz. : — 



1st. They are verticillate around a real axis, which is 

 the prolongation of the pedicel, and are adherent to it 

 by their inner angle ; this takes place in the Malvaceae, 

 where we see five or more carpels around a column which 

 arises from the pedicel. This column is expanded (in 

 Stegia, for example) into a kind of terminal disc, and 

 the carpels adhere to it by their inner angles. We 

 observe an analogous organization in the Euphorbiaceae; 

 it is also met with in certain foreign genera, such as 

 Gyrostemon, which seem intermediate between these two 

 families, otherwise so different. 



2d. We also find the carpels verticillate at the top of 

 a central column, but pendulous from it, and con- 

 sequently only adherent by the summit of their inner 

 angle. We see this in the Geraniaceoe : the carpels do 

 not adhere to the column by their edges, but hang from 

 its apex by a long pedicel. 



3d. The carpels may also be verticillate at the apex of 

 the axis, but erect and adherent by the base of their inner 



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