300 MORPHOLOGY. 



Lastly, I will j ust offer a few remarks on the enigmatical family of Po- 

 dostemacece, in which we cannot yet well decide whether the complication 

 of germens and stamens together is to be accounted a flower or an inflo- 

 rescence. The history of development is altogether unknown ; young 

 buds of Podostemon ceratophyllum, preserved in spirits exhibited to 

 me the two stamens so closely approximated to the germen on the 

 scarcely perceptible stem, that the bract (?) standing on its base almost 

 formed a regular ternary circle with the two situated on the germen ; 

 it may be that the parts of a solitary flower are here thus separated by 

 eccentric development, since, in some others, e. g. Tristicha Thou. (Du- 

 fourea Willd.), a regular ternary floral envelope encloses a germen and a 

 stamen, and the flower appears tolerably regular in almost all the remain- 

 ing genera. 



138. The following points must be taken into account in the 

 flower, deserving a more minute discussion, and they will, there- 

 fore, constitute the next sections : 1. The arrangement of the 

 flowers upon the plant, inflorescence, and the foliar organs 

 standing in relation thereto, the bracts and bracteoles ; 2. The 

 parts of the flower at the epoch of blooming ; 3. The transform- 

 ation and development of the parts of the flower into fruit; 

 4. The parts of the flower at the time when the seed is ripe. 



Many matters I shall relate briefly, because they have been treated 

 previously in the proper places, and may conveniently be left out here. 

 I had rather, however, be useful in indicating a necessary reform of 

 science, than bring confusion and injury upon it by an ill-timed radical 

 revolution. 



I. The Inflorescence. 



139. It has already been stated that the inflorescence is 

 nothing else than the axis and its ramification where all the buds 

 are flower-buds. We here distinguish the solitary flower, either as 

 a terminal flower (flos terminalis), or as an axillary or lateral flower 

 (flos axillaris). The latter is sometimes naked (nudus), on account 

 of the suppression of the folia jloralia, or bractece. If the lateral 

 branch bears only one flower and bracteoles besides, it is called a pe- 

 dicel (pedicellus) below the flower, and the axis, to which the pedicel 

 is an axillary shoot, is called the peduncle (pedunculus). The as- 

 sumption of a pedicel to the terminal flower is purely arbitrary, 

 and at most to be maintained only by the presence of bracteoles, 

 and an articulation of the axis. The accumulated flowers always 

 stand, in a rudimentary condition, in a capitulum. From this, by 

 extension of the flower-stalk (pedunculus, here called rachis), comes 

 a spike (spica), by development of the pedicels an umbel (umbella); 

 by development of both, a raceme (racemus) : these are called the 

 simple forms of inflorescence, and in reality there are, and can be, 

 no others. If an inflorescence be enclosed in a single large bract, 

 this is called a spathe (spatha) ; if, on the contrary, it be enclosed 

 in a circle or contracted spiral of bracts, the envelope formed by this 

 circle of bracts is called the involucre (involucrum). The simple 

 inflorescences may become combined in manifold ways, on which a 

 number of useless terms have been founded, with reference to the 



