86 VEGETABLE ORGANOGRAPHY. 



Section VIII. 



Of Monochlamydeons, or incomplete Flowers, or those 

 which have but one envelope. 



When a flower presents a single envelope, is it a 

 corolla, calyx, a union of both, or an organ different 

 from either ? All these opinions have been maintained, 

 and deserve to be examined. 



Tournefort, who made the character of the calyx to 

 consist in its being persistent, and that of the corolla in 

 its being caducous, found himself compelled, from this 

 false definition, to give different names to organs 

 evidently similar in analogous plants: thus he called 

 corolla in the Tulip the organ which he named calyx 

 in the Narcissus. Linnaeus did not attach any im- 

 portance to this definition, perhaps on account of that 

 which he had adopted ; he admitted, in fact, that the 

 calyx was the prolongation of the bark, and the corolla 

 of the liber. This distinction is hardly capable of being 

 maintained either in Monocotyledons, where there is 

 neither liber nor bark, or in Dicotyledons, when the 

 liber is nothing but the younger cortical layers. Thus 

 in practice Linnaeus usually called calyx that which was 

 green, and corolla that which was coloured; thus the 

 single envelope in Monochlamydeous Dicotyledons was, 

 according to him, calyx in Chenopodium, corolla in 

 Daphne ; and in Monocotyledons, calyx in Juncus, 

 corolla in the Liliacea? ; often he says " calyx nisi 

 corolla mavis," Sec. Lamarck, in his first works, defined 

 the corolla as the organ nearest the stamens, and con- 

 sequently named all single envelopes as such ; but he 

 afterwards abandoned this opinion. These different 

 modes of expression might perhaps suffice when it was 



