HOW FLOWEKS CLUB TOGETHER. 



153 



closer into it you will see it is really a great 

 group of flowers a compound flower-head, com- 

 posed of many dozen distinct blossoms or florets, 

 as we call them (Fig. 33). These, however, are 

 not all alike. The florets in the centre, which 

 you took no doubt at first sight for the stamens 

 and pistils, are small yellow tubular blossoms, 

 each with a combined corolla of five lobes, little 

 or no visible calyx, five 

 stamens united in a ring 

 round the style, and a 

 pistil consisting of an in- 

 ferior ovary, with a style 

 divided above into a two- 

 fold stigma (Fig. 34) . Here 

 we have clear evidence 

 that the plant belongs by 

 origin to the five-petalled 

 group ; it rather resembles 

 the harebell, in the plan 

 of its flower, on a much 

 smaller scale ; but it has 

 almost lost all trace of a 

 separate calyx, it has its 

 five petals united into a FIG. 35. 

 tubular corolla, it has still 

 its original five stamens, 

 but its carpels are now 

 reduced to one, with a 

 single seed, though traces of an earlier inter- 

 mediate stage, when the carpels were two, 

 remains even yet in the divided stigma. 



So much for the inner flowers or florets in the 

 daisy. The outer ones, which you took at first 



-SINGLE FLORET 

 FROM THE RAY OF A DAISY, 

 PINK AND WHITE, WITH 

 AN OVARY, BUT NO STA- 

 MENS. 



