The Embryo. 
The typical Asparagus fruit is a berry containing a small and 
variable number of seeds. These are fairly large, quite close 
together, and when ripe are often more or less flattened on two 
sides owing to the pressure they exert upon each other during 
their development ; when they escape crushing, however, they 
are almost spherical. On the thin, dark-coloured seed-coat 
there can, as a rule, be distinguished the hilum—a flat roughish 
area; and the micropyle, which has the appearance of a small 
dome-shaped protuberance. If the seed be carefully sliced 
open in a plane traversing both hilum and micropyle, a section 
will be obtained passing longitudinally through or by the side 
of the embryo, easily seen lying in the semi-transparent endosperm 
which is of extreme hardness, probably that it may resist the 
digestive processes of birds which feed upon the berries. 
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Pte. &. eS i oe Asparagus seeds, passing acs across pe 
embryo. Asparagus comorensts ; B, A. medeoloides Thunb. 
ac Hi, hilum ; Pl., plumule ; Cot., cotyledon 
The embryo may be straight as in A. medeolotdes (B, Fig. 1) 
and A. officinalis ; or somewhat curved as in A. rugulosus and 
A. comorensis (A, Fig. 1). It is long and narrow, reaching from 
the micropyle, against the dome-shaped covering of which its 
radicle is pressed, almost to the opposite side of the seed. In 
longitudinal section the extremity of the radicle shows all the 
structure of a normal root-apex, very well developed as compared 
with many other embryos (Plate LIII, Fig. 4). Ata distance above 
this, varying in different species from th (in A. rugulosus) to ird 
(in A. medeoloides) of the total length of the embryo, is hated 
the plumular meristem, a laterally placed, rather slanting patch 
of tissue showing no differentiation into axis and leaf (Plate LIII, 
Figs. 8,9). The remainder of the embryo forms the cotyledon 
(Plate LII, Figs. rand 5), whose lowersheathing portion completely 
enfolds the plumule ; the minute slit through which the shoot 
will emerge on germination being discernible, though not without 
