164 



HOW NEW PLANTS ARE STARTED 



flowers (flowers with stamens). 1 If you shake a stalk of 

 corn when the anther sacs have the pollen ready, a cloud 

 of yellow powder will fall from the tassels, looking like a 

 shower of sulphur. 



The pistillate cornflowers grow lower on the stalk 

 in one or more bunches, or "ears." If you pull away the 



husk from a young ear 



soon after the silk begins 

 to show, you will see 

 that each of the many 

 silk threads ends in a 

 kernel. This kernel is 

 an ovary ; each thread 

 of silk is both style and 

 stigma ; kernel and silk 

 together form a pistillate 

 flower. The pollen from 

 some tassel flower at the 

 top falls upon the many 

 silk stigmas of each ear 

 and is carried down to 

 the bunch of ovaries. 2 



Flowers that contain both stamens and pistils are called 

 perfect flowers, whether calyx and corolla are present or 

 not. Flowers that lack either stamens or pistils are im- 



CORN SILK. 

 Pistillate flowers. 



1 These flowers are very small. They grow along the spikes of the tassels, 

 in couplets. Each flower is nearly inclosed in a hard, ribbed covering called 

 glume. If this is pressed aside with a pin, one can see three stamens, partly 

 surrounded perhaps by an inner wrapping. Usually only one flower of each 

 couple produces pollen. 



2 The pistillate cornflowers in the ear have interesting likenesses to the 

 staminate flowers of the tassel. Thus the flowers on the ear, too, grow in 

 couples. If we examine the young ear with great care, a sterile grain will be 

 found under tlic fertile one. And each grain of the couple is inclosed in outer 

 and inner wrappings. These show on the cob when the ripe corn has been 

 shelled. 



