316 MORPHOLOGY. 



c. The accessory foliar organs. 

 D. The rudimentary fruit. 



a. Of the pistil. 



b. Of the spermophore. 



c. Of the seed-buds. 



Hitherto the anthers have been called the male organs of a plant 

 (with the superfluous collective term andrceceum) ; the seed-buds 

 and their receptacle the pistil, the female parts (together the 

 gynoBceum). A flower that contains both parts is termed herma- 

 phrodite (flos hermaphroditus) ; flowers that contain only one of 

 those kinds of organs, are termed unisexual flowers (flores unisexu- 

 aleSy diclini). When, in the last case, male and female flowers (mas 

 etfemina) appear on the same individual plant, such plant is termed 

 monoecious (planta monoicd)', when they appear on separate indi- 

 viduals, the plant is termed dio3cious ( planta dioicd). An inflores- 

 cence which contains both male and female flowers, also is termed 

 inflorescentia androgyna. Here again it must be distinguished 

 whether the male and female blooms are formed upon different 

 plans, as in the Cupuliferce (true diclines); or whether, through the 

 suppression of one or other part, a pseudo-diclinous condition 

 appears in a flower formed on the plan of a hermaphrodite. This 

 latter condition, which is never found to run through all the 

 examples of any species of plant, brings monoecious and dioecious 

 species into hermaphrodite genera, and suggested to Linnaeus the 

 establishment of his twenty-third class, Polygamia, where in one 

 and the same species male, female, and hennophrodite flowers are 

 present. 



Very incorrectly, the pistil, as the receptacle of the seed-buds, and as 

 the apparatus to facilitate impregnation, is usually counted among the 

 essential parts of the flower ; for it may be 

 absent as well as the floral envelopes, as in iso 



the Coniferce, Cycadacece, and Loranthacece, 

 which have a naked seed-bud. The simplest 

 form of the flower is that in which only a 

 few foliar organs are converted into anthers, 

 and between them the simple extremity 

 of the axis displays itself as the simplest 

 form of seed-bud. "We might reckon as 

 exactly such an ideal flower (primary flower) 

 that of Viscum album (fig. 180.), were not the 

 true condition interfered with here by the 

 fact, that some examples constantly develope 

 only anthers, the seed-bud not being perfected 

 for its function; whilst upon others the axis 

 alone is perfected into the seed-bud in its 

 most simple form, and the four foliar or- 

 gans persist around it in the condition of 

 leaves. Further, I have to observe, with respect to Viscum, that there is 



lso Viscum album. Vertical section of the female flower, a , Leaves of the floral 

 envelope ; b, naked seed-bud, consisting solely of the naked nucleus, and formed from 



