252 Flowers and their Pedigrees, 



on the spike between the scattered pistils. This 

 result is just what you might naturally expect from 

 squeezing a lot of marsh calla blossoms closely 

 together on a spike. Even in the upper half of the 

 spike, the blossoms often keep up some marks of their 

 original bisexual character, for you will occasionally 

 find a few stray green knobs sparsely sprinkled here 

 and there among the golden stamens of the top portion. 

 Nevertheless, we may fairly say that even here a ten- 

 dency towards specialisation has been distinctly set 

 up : the uppermost flowers tend to become almost 

 entirely pollen bearing sacs, and the lowermost 

 flowers tend to become preponderatingly, though 

 not entirely, seed-bearing ovaries. 



Now if we turn from these transitional steps to the 

 completely developed arum, wliat do we find ? Here, 

 the top of the spike has become absolutely bald and 

 bare of flowers, instead of being covered, as in the 

 i^thiopian lily, with thickly grouped florets up to 

 its very summit ; and at the same time, the actual 

 flowers in the lower portion, instead of running to- 

 gether into an uninterrupted cone, are separated into 

 three distinct groups or bodies. At the bottom of all, 

 as in the ^Ethiopian lily, we now get the female 

 flowers alone ; only, instead of being intermixed with 

 stamens, they consist simply of naked ovaries ; the 



