ia8 WONDERS OF PLANT LIFE 



the edges of this process, which may be called the 

 carpellary leaf, and these will show where under 

 ordinary conditions the ovules would have been. 



For purposes of convenience the different parts 

 of the typical flower have been dealt with in the 

 order in which they occur in the actual specimen 

 when a start is made from the outside. By doing 

 so it has been made clear that every part of the 

 flower has a most intimate connection with any 

 other portion. In every case one was brought 

 back either directly or through some other organ 

 to the leaf as the origin of that particular por- 

 tion of the flower. It is quite certain that the 

 foliage of the plant must have been in existence 

 prior to the blossom, for whilst flowering plants 

 can persist without blooms, they could not live 

 at all without foliage or its equivalent. 



The question as to the order in which the 

 various parts of the flower were evolved is a most 

 important one. Though the matter is still con- 

 troversial, it is sufficiently obvious that the first 

 portion of the flower to be formed could scarcely 

 have been the calyx, the next the corolla, and 

 so on. It cannot be advanced that these organs, 

 which, after all, are only appendages, could have 

 been formed in advance of the reproductive por- 

 tion. As we have seen earlier, the main object 



