ELEMENTS OV STRUCTURAL BOTANY. 57 



from the scape, and so give it the appearance of being 

 the lower petal instead of the iijiper one, as it really is. 



72. The structure of the stamens and j)istils remains 

 to be examined, and a glance at the llower shows you 

 that we have here something totally dift'erent from the 

 common arrangement of these organs. In the axis of 

 the flower, immediately behind the opening into the 

 spur, there is an upward projection known as the column. 

 The face of this column is the stigma ; on each side of 

 the stigma, and adhering to it, is an anther-cell. These 

 cells, though separated by the column, constitute but 

 a siiu/le stamen. The stamen, then, in this case is united 

 nith the pistil, a condition which is described as m/uan- 

 tlrous. 



73. If you have a flower in which the anther-cells are 

 bursting open, you will see that the pollen does not 

 issue from them in its usual dust-like form, but if you 

 use tlie point of your needle carefully you may remove 



^^ the contents of each cell in a mj.ss. These pollen 

 masses are of the form shown in Fig, 87. The 

 grains are kept together by a fine tissue or web, 

 and the slender stalk, upon which each pollen 

 mass is raised, is attached by its lower end to 

 a sticky disk on the front of the stigma just 

 j,.^ g^ above the mouth of the spur. Insects, in their 

 efforts to reach the honey, bring their heads in contact 

 with these disks, and when they fly away carry tlie 

 pollen-masses with them, and deposit them on the 

 stigma of the next flower visited. In fact, without the 

 aid of insects it is difiicult to see how flowers of this 

 sort could be fertilized at all. 



