92 TJie Elements of a Flower. 



We have now been over a very complete set of names. They are all 

 that can possibly be employed in the description of any ordinaiy flower, 

 except of grasses, composites, and a few other orders. None of them can 

 be conveniently avoided when the parts they indicate are present ; but 

 some are not much used, as perianth, andrcecium, gyncecium, and gyno- 

 phore. As in all lessons where very much is compressed into a very few 

 words, it has been inevitably a dull one. 



For the sake of practice, " airing our vocabulary," let us now see the 

 accidents that may befall a flower, or the things wherein the flowers of one 

 plant can differ from those of another. They are simply four : the organs 

 may be diminished, suppressed, connate, or adnate. 



Diminution is seen in the pea, in which the upper petals are smaller than 

 the lower one; and in the violet, where the lower ones are smaller than the 

 upper. Such flowers are called irregular. 



Suppression is seen in the horse-chestnut, where the lower petal and thf 

 three lower stamens are commonly wanting. Such flowers are unsytnmet- 

 rical. 



Flowers which are neither irregular nor unsynunetrical are regular. Sup- 

 pression in the gyncecium, reducing the carpels to three or one, is common 

 even in flowers called regular. Irregular flowers with a corol of two lips 

 are labiate. Connate organs are united into one piece with others of the 

 same kind ; connate carpels are found in the tomato ; the stamens are con- 

 nate by their filaments into a tube in the mallow tribe, and by their anthers 

 in the composites ; five petals are connate in the morning-glory and the 

 pumpkin, and five sepals in sage and pink. Organs which are not connate 

 are distinct. Flowers with connate petals are called monopetalous. 



Adnate organs grow to organs of a different kind fiom themselves. In 

 the orchids, the filaments and styles are adnate ; in the cherry, the bases of 

 all the stamens, petals, and sepals, are adnate ; in those plants where the 

 fruit seems to form below the flower, as in the apple, squash, and currant, 

 the bases of all the organs are adnate into one mass. Organs that are not 

 adnate are free. 



Not only have I clearly and accurately defined forty-two botanical terms, 

 but all the while I have kept in view another thing. I am now prepared 

 to finish in a single sentence the classification that I left incomplete in Octo- 



