90 The Elements of a Flower. 



THE ELEMENTS OF A FLOWER. 



In " The Horticultural Journal " for October, I tried to enable my read- 

 ers to refer every plant, herb, shrub, or tree, to one of four divisions, — 

 flowerless, endogen, gymnosperm, and exogen. Although the last must be 

 subdivided, we cannot well carry classification farther without resorting to 

 words that are not used in common conversation, or not used in the defi- 

 nite technical sense which botanists find necessary. For, when a child 

 speaks of a leaf^xova. a rose, he may mean either of five different things to 

 which science gives five different names, — leaves, leaflets, stipules, sepals, 

 and petals. A person who had painted roses enough would have as definite 

 ideas of each without the names as with them ; but he could not as con- 

 veniently talk about them, nor write of them. To know any number of 

 unusual words would not be to know botany ; but it would be inconvenient 

 to learn much of botany without mastering vety many of them. 



And then, in a certain sense, names are things. You cannot think with- 

 out the use of names, nor think accurately without their accurate use. It 

 is no reproach to science, then, that it teaches a man to name his tools. A 

 man might, indeed, know the name of every instrument used in surgery, 

 and of every subdivision of the human body, and still be no surgeon ; but 

 it is certain that a man who would become a surgeon must and will learn 

 these names. So every child that handles flowers ought to know the tech- 

 nical names by which all their parts are indicated by the use of one single 

 word for each ; for in this way only is learned that accurate observation 

 of flowers without which no one will ever become a botanist. It is my 

 object now to explain these terms so clearly, that any little child who reads 

 them with a flower in hand can understand them. 



Take a flower of which the outer part is green, and there are inner leaves 

 which are not. Be sure that you do not take one of the composites,^ — the 

 order to which the sunflower, aster, daisy, and dandelion belong. These 

 are a tenth of all our flowering-plants, and perhaps a half of those that 

 blossom in the fall. Nothing else will come amiss except the four-o'clock. 

 We will take, if we can, a single rose. 



Even the flower-stem has a name different from a leaf-stem. It is called 



