DIPSACE/E 



Ultimate leaves cauline, sessile, connate by their broad bases, 

 oblong-lanceolate, obtuse, irregularly and obtusely toothed except 

 at the base and tip, penninerved with numerous subparallel nerves, 

 glabrous, spiny along the midrib beneath with recurved prickles ; 

 teeth deepest and coarsest about the middle of the leaf. 



Dipsacus ferox, Lois. (fig. 448). 



Germination. The radicle emerges at the apex of the fruit 

 through the mouth of the involucel. Numerous root-hairs are 

 produced on the radicle and the base of the 

 hypocotyl. 



The fruit enclosed in the involucel is 

 then usually carried up with the coty- 

 ledons (fig. 448), which by widening have 

 split the involucel along one side (about 

 the second day after their first appearance 

 above ground). 



Whether the fruit and involucel are 

 carried up or not, the energy of the expand- 

 ing cotyledons is generally, if not always, 

 able to extricate them from such invest- 

 ments, and the cotyledons spread out to the 

 light. 1 They are oblong, obtuse, entire with 

 a slightly prominent, apical, colourless 

 tooth, narrowed into a short petiole, with 

 a few alternate, ascending, obscure, lateral 

 nerves, glabrous, pale green but soon be- 

 coming deep green. Hypocotyl glabrous. 



Scabiosa australis, Wulf. 



Aclienc conical- oblong, terminated by the small funnel-shaped, 

 four-toothed lamina of the calyx, and surrounded by an involucel, 

 thin-walled, membranous, ribbed, glabrous ; involucel flask-shaped, 

 with a narrow neck and funnel-shaped mouth, strongly eight-ribbed, 

 with the ribs obtuse and the alternate ones smaller, remaining as a 

 covering to the fruit till its germination and decay. 



Seed oblong, obtuse at the lower end, narrowed to a short obtuse 

 point at the upper end, closely conforming to the interior of the 

 achene ; hilum and micropyle superior, contiguous ; testa thin, 

 membranous, very pale-coloured ; chalaza apical and inferior. 



Endosperm copious, fleshy, white when moist. 



1 Ninety-eight to a hundred per cent, of the seedlings carry up the fruit 

 and involucel during germination. 



FIG. 448. Dipsacus ferox. 

 The fruit enclosed in the 

 involucel carried up by 

 the cotyledons in germi- 

 nation, x 3. (Second day 

 after first appearance 

 above ground.) 



