
Igor] BRIEFER ARTICLES 433 
had before they were leaf and stem. Why, then, does the idealistic 
morphology insist, for example, upon reducing everything (excepting 
the sporangia) in a highly specialized flower to the categories of leaf 
and stem? In fact, the flower has been so long an independent organ 
that it has had time to progress far toward independent morphological 
membership, as witness its ability to suppress circles, to alter the num- 
ber of their parts, and to rearrange their phyllotaxy quite independently 
of any actions performed by leaves on a stem. Moreover, various 
parts of the flower (in some flowers, not in all) have become more or 
less independent members, as we may clearly see in those which are 
epigynous. The ovary of such a flower, for example, unquestionably 
originated in sporophyllary leaves standing upon a conical receptacle, 
precisely as in numberless flowers today; gradually, however, as 
embryology proves, the formation of the ovarian cavity was given up 
by the carpels, and assumed by the receptacle, which grew up in the 
form of a cup carrying the other parts upon its rim, while the carpels 
finally came to form simply a roof over the cavity. But, and here is a 
crucial point, it must not be supposed that during this process the 
receptacle and carpels retained their old carpel and receptacle nature 
(much less their “stem” and their “leaf”? nature); on the contrary, the 
new kind of ovary acquired an identity and a character of its own, and 
in that new identity and character the old identity and character of 
receptacle and carpel gradually melted away, and lost their distinctness, 
so that such an ovary has become a new member and is not simply a 
compound of receptacle and carpel. It is useless, therefore, to expect 
that such an ovary will build placentae, partitions, style, or stigma 
according to the rules in vogue with ordinary receptacle and carpel, 
and useless also to discuss whether in such an ovary the cavity is lined 
with carpel or not, for the ovarian wall is no longer either receptacle 
or carpel or both, it is ovarian wall; carpel and receptacle have not 
fused to form it; their tissue has melted away, so to speak; into the tis- 
sue which does form it. For simplicity I here treat this attainment 
of membership by such an ovary as if it were complete, though in fact 
it is not so in any ovary known to me, for in all of them some features 
of both carpel and receptacle may be traced, especially at top and bot- 
tom of the ovary. So also, with other parts of the flower; the placenta, 
which originated in the manner still shown by many flowers, as swollen 
edges of carpels, has become independent of its carpellary origin in 
many flowers, as in those with free central placenta, where no trace of 
