ITS NATURE AND PARTS. 165 



is as highly colored. A name being wanted for the individual 

 leaves which make up the calyx, analogous to that for corolla- 

 leaves, DeCandolle adopted Necker's coinage of the word sepal. 

 Calyx-leaves are SEPALS. 



298 . The Corolla is the inner set of floral envelopes, usually (but 

 not always) of delicate texture and other than green color, form- 

 ing therefore the most showy part of the blossom. Its several 

 leaves are the PETALS. 1 



299. The floral envelopes are for the protection of the organs 

 within, in the bud or sometimes afterward. Also, some of them, 

 by their bright colors, their fragrance, and their saccharine or 

 other secretions, serve for allurement of insects to the blossom, to 

 mutual advantage. (504.) This furnishes a reason for neutral 

 flowers, those devoid of essential organs, which sometimes 

 occur along with less conspicuous perfect ones. "The leaves of 

 the flower " are therefore indirectly subservient to reproduction. 



300. The essential organs, being commonly plural 

 in number, sometimes need a collective name. Where- 

 fore, the aggregate stamens of a flower have been 

 called the ANDRCECIUM ; the pistils, the GYN<ECiUM. 2 



301. The Stamens 8 are the male or fertilizing 

 organs of a flower. A complete stamen (Fig. 311, 

 313) consists of FILAMENT (/), the stalk or support, 

 and ANTHER (a), a double sac or body of two cells, 



side by side, filled with a powdery substance, POLLEN, which is 

 at length discharged, usually through a slit or cleft of each cell. 



well-formed name of perigonium, and in the sense here given. But later (in 

 the Organographie) he proposed to restrict it to cases in which the part is 

 of ambiguous nature, as in Monocotyledons. The earlier definition is no 

 doubt the proper one ; but the occasions for using the term in descriptive 

 botany are mainly where the nature may seem to be ambiguous or con- 

 fused, or where, from the union or close similarity of outer and inner circles, 

 it is most convenient to treat the parts as forming one organ. 



1 Fabius Columna, at the close of the sixteenth century, appears to have 

 introduced this term, or, as Tournefort declares, "primus omnium quod 

 sciam Petali vocem proprie usurpavit, ut folia florum a foliis proprie dictis 

 distingueret." 



2 The male household and the female household respectively, terms in- 

 troduced by Keeper (Linnaea, i. 437), in the form of andrceceum &n(igyn(Eceum ; 

 but the diphthong in the latter should also be a. The orthography 

 andrcecium and gynoecium (early adopted by Bentham, in Labiatarum Gen. et 

 Spec. ) is conformable to the Linnaean Monaxia, Dicecia, &c. 



8 The name (from the Greek and Latin name of the warp of the ancient 

 upright loom, and thence used in the sense of threads) was applied, down 

 to Tournefort and later, to the filaments; and the anthers were termed 



FIG. 313. Stamen, composed of/, filament, and a, anther, with cells opening 

 laterally and discharging pollen. 



