2 14 Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



as it were, a bottle turned inward, with the seeds on 

 the inner side. After flowering, as the fruit ripens, 

 this outer cup grows round and red, forming the hip 

 or fruit-case, inside which are to be found the separate 

 Httle hairy seeds. Birds eat this dry berry, though 

 we do not, and thus aid in dispersing the species. 

 But though they digest the soft red outer pulp, formed 

 by the swollen stalk, they cannot digest the hairy 

 seed, so the plant attains its prime object of getting 

 them duly scattered. The true roses, then, are another 

 branch of the original potentilla stock, which have 

 acquired a bushy mode of growth, with a fruit differing 

 in construction from that of the brambles. Our Eng- 

 lish kinds are merely pink ; the more developed exotics 

 are often scarlet and crimson. 



We have altogether some five true wild roses in 

 Britain. The commonest is the dog-rose, which 

 everybody knows well ; and next comes the almost 

 equally familiar sweet-briar, with its delicately scented 

 glandular leaves. The burnet-rose is the parent of 

 our cultivated Scotch roses, and the two other native 

 kinds are comparatively rare. Double garden roses 

 are produced from the single five-petalled wild varie- 

 ties by making the stamens (which are the organs for 

 manufacturing pollen) turn into bright-coloured petals. 

 There is always more or less of a tendency for stamens 



