STRUCTURE OF FRUIT. 173 



sexual parts and appendages of the adherent ovaries. 

 In Symphoricarpos, a genus so near Lonicera that it was 

 for a long time united with it, instead of there being only 

 two flowers, there *are several united by the ovaries, 

 whence there results a fruit composed of several joined 

 together, each of which still presents its own eye : the same 

 occurs in Morinda ; it is also met with in Opercularia, with 

 only this difference, that the flowers, which by their near 

 approach form a compact head, have not a fleshy fruit, 

 but their calyces and bracts are all united together : at 

 flowering, we see all the corollas distinct — at maturity, 

 the fruit is slightly irregular, and composed of all the 

 partial ones joined in a head. The same thing takes 

 place in the Composite, in Gundelia ; here the bracte- 

 oles united together surround the partial fruits, so that 

 at maturity there results a mass composed of the recep- 

 tacle, bracteoles, and achenia of all the flowers of which 

 the head was composed. 



The fruit known under the name of Fig, is a remark- 

 able example of aggregation, analogous to the preceding 

 cases : it is either a hollow pedicel, or rather (if attention 

 be paid to those exotic species which have scales 

 externally), a kind of fleshy involucrum, formed of a 

 great number of thick bracts intimately united at the 

 base either with each other, or with the top of the 

 peduncle, and very slightly free at their extreme apex. 

 The flowers are very numerous within this involucrum, 

 the top of which is scarcely open ; the female ones, 

 which are the most numerous and more central, are trans- 

 formed into as many little caryopses as there seem to be 

 seeds, and which, at maturity, are as nuts in the centre 

 of this fleshy or pulpy involucrum : it may be said, then, 

 that there is no other difference between the fruit of the 

 Fig and that of the Rose, except that the pulpy part of 

 the Fig is an involucrum, and that of the Rose a calyx ; 

 that, consequently, the seeds of the former are caryopses 



