HOW PLANTS MABBY. 



87 



bv a flower is a mass of red or yellow petals, 

 conspicuously arranged about the true floral 

 organs. The petals form, in pomt of fact, the 

 popular notion of a flower— though from the 

 point of view of science they are^comparatively un- 

 important, and are 

 commonly spoken 

 of (with the calyx) 

 as ''the floral en- 

 velopes." It is the 

 stamens and pistils 

 (or carpels) that are 

 the true flowers; 

 they do the mass of 

 the real work ; and 

 an enormous num- 

 ber of flowers pos- 

 sess these organs 

 alone, without any 

 conspicuous petals 

 or other coloured 

 surfaces. 



However, if you 

 take a pretty garden 

 flower (say a scarlet 

 geranium) as a typi- 

 cal example, and 

 begin to examine it — 

 from the centre out- fig. 16.— grains of pollen, very 

 ward (which is the much magnified, sending out 



, ,^ X _, POLLEN-TUBES. 



truest way), you 



will find it consists of the following parts, in the 



following order : — 



In the very centre of all comes the pistil t 



