326 MORPHOLOGY. 



adelphia, diadelphia, polyadelphia. When the foliar organs of the 

 flower are coherent, the blended part is termed the tube (tubus 

 perianthii, calycis, corolla, &c.); the free parts, the limb (limbus)', 

 and the boundary of the two, the throat (faux). One of the most 

 striking examples of coherence, which also has no analogue in the 

 stem-leaves, is found in the blending of the foliar organs of the 

 flower at the point only, the union never extending further ; so that 

 the foliar organs are connected above, but free below, as in the 

 corolla of the male flowers of Chamcedorea, Casuarina, and in the 

 androphore of Symphyonema montamim (?).* 



Abortion in the flower has the same and simple meaning which 

 I have explained at length in the case of the foliaceous organs ; 

 namely, that some part present in the rudimentary condition is 

 arrested in development, and during the gradual perfecting of the 

 flower, and thus at last retires from observation. The assumption 

 of any other kind of abortion has no place in natural science ; it is 

 a mere dream of the imagination. So soon as the individual parts 

 of a flower become distinct members, the foliar organs appear ar- 

 ranged around an ideal and real axis of the flower (the axial organs 

 of the flower), and in the rudimentary condition always regularly. 

 Through subsequent unequal development of the single parts the 

 flower frequently becomes symmetrical, or, as it is called, irregular. 

 This irregularity is always such, that the upper part of a flower 

 becomes developed differently from the under. Such irregularity 

 very seldom affects the germen, which almost universally remains 

 regular, even in symmetrical flowers ; yet there are cases in which 

 this is the onlv symmetrical part, as in many of the Scrophulariacece, 

 AcanthacecB, and Cryptocoryne spiralis. If the symmetrical flower, 

 with or without coherence of its parts, is divided into two halves, 

 an upper and under, developed in different ways, they are generally 

 termed bilabiate ; but if only one single foliar organ is deve- 

 loped in an aberrant form, that leaf acquires the name of labellum, 

 or lip. Rare, indeed, are the cases where the entire flower is 

 unsymmetrical, as in Goodyera discolor. 



It is not possible to state, in general terms, the number 

 of parts which may unite to form, a flower. We find, of foliar 

 organs alone, sometimes so many as fifty or sixty united in one 

 flower. Certain combinations, on the contrary, are rarely met 

 with : I know of no monomerous flower possessed of double floral 

 envelopes. When the various parts of the flower are present 

 in large numbers, these arise universally, in one or more circles 

 (whorls), at the same height on the axis, and at the same time. 

 When circles containing members of equal number follow in suc- 

 cession, the members of the one circle usually stand opposite the 

 interspaces between the members of the preceding circle (the circles 

 and their members alternating) ; they seldom stand precisely before 



* Other conditions, such as the connection of the points of the two outer petals in 

 the Fumariacea, of the anthers in the Composite, &c. do not belong here. These are 

 glued together by a fluid secretion. 



