TO! OUTLINES OF BOTANY. 



this arrangement as well as their usual shape that has suggested the name 

 of scales, borrowed from the scales of a fish. Imbricated scales, bracts, or 

 leaves, are said to be sqitarrose, when their tips are pointed, and very spread- 

 ing or recurved. 



59. Sometimes, however, most or all the leaves of the plant are reduced 

 to small scales, in which case they do not appear to perform any particular 

 function. The name of scales is also given to any small broad scale-like 

 appendages or reduced organs, whether in the flower or any other part of 

 the plant. 



60. Bracts (Bracteai) are the upper leaves of a plant in flower (either 

 all those of the flowering branches, or only one or two immediately under 

 the flower), when different from the stem-leaves in size, shape, colour, or 

 arrangement. They are generally much smaller and more sessile. They 

 often partake of the colour of the flower, although they very frequently 

 also retain the green colour of the leaves. When small they are often called 



61. Floral leaves or leafy bracts are generally the lower bracts or the 

 upper leaves at the base of the flowering branches, intermediate in size, 

 shape, or arrangement, between the stem-leaves and the upper bracts. 



62. Eracteoles are the one or two last bracts under each flower, when 

 they differ materially in size, shape, or arrangement from the other bracts. 



63. Stipules are leaf-like or scale-like appendages at the base of the 

 leaf-stalk, or on the node of the stem. When present there are generally 

 two, one on each side of the leaf, and they sometimes appear to protect the 

 young leaf before it is developed. They are, however, exceedingly variable 

 in size and appearance, sometimes exactly like the true leaves except that 

 they have no buds in their axils, or looking like the leaflets of a compound 

 leaf, sometimes apparently the only leaves of the plant; generally small 

 and narrow, sometimes reduced to minute scales, spots, or scars, sometimes 

 united into one opposite the leaf, or more or less united with, or adnate to 

 the petiole, or quite detached from the leaf, and forming a ring or sheath 

 round the stem in the axil of the leaf. In a great number of plants they 

 are entirely wanting. 



64. Stipdla, or secondary stipules, are similar organs, sometimes found 

 on compound leaves at the points where the leaflets are inserted. 



65. When scales, bracts, or stipules, or almost any part of the plant be- 

 sides leaves and flowers, are stalked, they are saidtobesp#afe, from, stipes, 

 a stalk. 



7. Inflorescence and its Uracts. 



66. The Inflorescence of a plant is the arrangement of the flowering 

 branches, and of the flowers upon them. An Inflorescence is a flowering 

 branch, or the flowering summit of a plant above the last stem-leaves, with 

 its branches, bracts, and flowers. 



67. A single flower, or an inflorescence, is terminal when at the summit 

 of a stem or leafy branch, axillary when in the axil of a stem-leaf, leaf- 

 opposed when opposite to a stem-leaf. The inflorescence of a plant is said 

 to be terminal or determinate when the main stem and principal branches 

 end in a flower or inflorescence (not in a leaf-bud), axillary or indeterminate 

 when all the flowers or inflorescences are axillary, the stem or branches 

 ending in leaf-buds. 



68. A Peduncle is the stalk of a solitary flower, or of an inflorescence ; 



