FLOWERS 59 



You may have heard it said that people who pick flowers 

 apart to study them do not enjoy them so much as people 

 who do not. You may have heard that to know the names 

 of the parts of flowers and what they do will not add to 

 the pleasure you get from them. Do you beheve it? 

 Here is a structure which arouses our admiration and 

 interest as no other part of the plant does. When we 

 journey about we shall find flowers, new and strange to 

 us, which will excite new admiration and interest. Now 

 shall we say: "Here is a wonderful and beautiful thing 

 which interests me very much. I know that it has some- 

 thing important to do with the reproduction of plants, 

 and I know that my life depends on the reproduction of 

 plants. But I do not care to know anything more about 

 it. I can enjoy it more if I do not understand it." The 

 truth is, however, that your enjoyment of flowers will be 

 very greatly increased by learning as much as you can 

 about them. Their beauty, which pleases you now, will 

 please you far more when you understand their usefulness, 

 and the various forms of their structures. 



The Structure of Flowers. — The first step toward under- 

 standing flowers is to understand what are the parts of 

 which they are usually composed. Look at Figure ii. 

 It shows three flowers of syringa, a shrub whose white, 

 sweet-scented blossoms are seen in June on many lawns 

 and in the parks. The white, leaf-like parts (marked by 

 p in the picture) are petals; taken together they form what 

 is called the corolla. The uppermost flower in the pic- 

 ture is the oldest ; its petals have dropped off. Under the 

 petals are five green parts {s). These are sepals; taken 

 together they form the calyx. It is the calyx which is the 



