368 



PRACTICAL BOTANY 



Cinchona trees of several species, growing wild in the Andes 

 and cultivated in India and elsewhere, furnish cinchona bark. 

 From this quinia (quinine), one of the most valuable of all 

 remedies, is extracted. 



Ornamental plants of two genera of the Madder family 

 Bouvardia and Gardenia are rather commonly cultivated 

 in greenhouses. 



339. The Composite family (Composite). This immense fam- 

 ily comprises about 11,000 species, those of temperate climates 

 mostly herbs ; some species of the tropics 

 are shrubs, lianas, and even trees. The 

 flowers are epigynous (Fig. 303, Z>) ; 

 calyx rudimentary ; corolla tubular and 

 five-lobed, or strap-shaped, or bilaterally 

 symmetrical ; stamens five, with anthers 

 united into a ring ; stigma two-lobed ; 

 fruit an akene (Fig. 304). The most 

 obvious characteristic of the Composite 

 is the grouping of the flowers into a 

 head. This sometimes (as in the thistles) 

 consists wholly of tubular flowers, some- 

 times (as in the sunflowers and the yar- 

 row, Fig. 303) of tubular disk flowers 

 surrounded by strap-shaped ray flowers, 

 and sometimes (as in the dandelion) of 

 strap-shaped flowers only. 

 The Composite are ranked as the highest seed plants. They 

 probably owe their great numbers and wide distribution over 

 the earth largely to their very perfect arrangements for securing 

 pollination and fertilization. 1 Part of their success is no doubt 

 also due to their means of dispersing seeds by the wind, as in 

 the thistle, dandelion, and other genera (Figs. 136 and 141) ; 

 or by animal agency, as in the burdock, Spanish needle, and 

 the cocklebur (Figs. 135 and 352). Composite are very fully 



1 See Knuth-Davis, Handbook of Flower Pollination. Clarendon Press, 

 Oxford. 



FIG. 302. Flower of coffee 

 and a fruit partially dis- 

 sected to show the seeds 



After Karsten 



