FRUIT. 27 



We will try and find one that has been some time in 

 flower. Here is one from which calyx, and corolla, 

 and stamens have fallen off, and now you can see the 

 pistil very well. It has many little bags, about 30 or 

 40 of them, rather flat, with short pointed 

 beaks. You are looking at the fruit of the 

 buttercup. 



I will break off one or two of the little 

 pistil bags, and place them in your hand. 

 If you look carefully you will see that 

 they are a little swollen in the middle. 

 That is because each little bag has a seed Fig 23. Pistil 



. of Buttercup 



inside It. (magnified). 



Now, in the buttercup, as we have seen, a > stamen - 

 the fruit is the ripened pistil a bundle of pointed 

 pistil bags containing the seed. But in other plants 

 these beaked pistil bags are very different. They are 

 found in many different shapes ; they are arranged in 

 many different ways. Sometimes they are joined with 

 the calyx and other parts of the flower ; in some plants 

 they have one seed, in others many seeds. So we 

 have different kinds of fruits. I will tell you about 

 some of them, and we will see how many different 

 kinds we can find as we go along. 



If it is not too late in the year, we may come across 

 some wild strawberries. Well, the strawberry has 

 many separate pistil or seed bags, with single seeds in 

 them, like the buttercup. But they are carried further 

 apart from one another by the sweet juicy pulp which 

 you like so much to eat, and if you look at a straw- 



