THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLOWER 



1047 



was brought back either directly or through 

 some other organ to the leaf as the origin 

 of that particular portion of the flower. 

 It is quite certain that the fuUage of the 

 plant must have been in existence prior 

 to the blossom, for whilst flowering plants 

 can persist without blooms, they could not 

 live at all without foliage or its equivalent. 

 The question as to the order in which the 

 various parts of the flower were evolved 

 is a most important one. Though the 

 matter is still a controversial one. it is 

 sufficiently obvious that the first portion 

 of the flower to be formed could scarcely 

 have been the calvx. the next the corolla, 



and so on. It cannot be advanced that 

 these organs, which, after all, are only 

 appendages, could have been formed in 

 advance of the reproductive portion. As 

 we have seen in an earlier chapter, the 

 main object of the brightly coloured corolla 

 seems in every case to be the means of 

 advertising the presence of the essential 

 parts of the flower, in connection with the 

 scheme of fertihsation. Flowers with 

 sepals and petals, but lacking the repro- 

 ductive processes, are, of course, unknown 

 in Nature, whilst there are many instances 

 in which the corolla is quite absent. One 

 cannot well escape the conclusion that 



CURIOUS BEGONIA BLOOM 

 The stamens in the centre degenerate into petals. 



