GAMOPETAL^— COMPOSITE i6i 



The seed-producing flowers of both plants are small and 

 relatively inconspicuous ; yet, being grouped together, they 

 form showy masses of bloom. The inflorescence of the 

 Guelder-Rose consists of two kinds of flowers : (i.) Those in 

 the centre, which are normal in structure, each being endowed 

 with perfect stamens and carpels, and a small regular corolla ; 

 (ii.) others ranged round the margins of the inflorescence, 

 having their stamens and carpels so reduced as to be useless, 

 yet each possessing a large and conspicuous corolla. The 

 marginal flowers are incapable of taking any direct share in 

 the production of seeds ; their sole office is to attract insects 

 to the central blossoms, which alone make seeds. The 

 " Snowball Tree " is an artificial variety of the Guelder-Rose : 

 all its flowers are changed into the non-productive marginal 

 flowers with showy corollas. 



COMPOSITJE (Daisy Family) 



Herbs, rarely shrubs. Leaves exstipulate. Inflorescence 

 a capitulum with an involucre. Flowers small, regular or 

 irregular, cyclic, epigynous. Sepals small or absent, sometimes 

 replaced by a pappus. Petals five (or four), gamopetalous, 

 valvate in the bud. Stamens five (or four), epipetalous ; 

 anthers united. Carpels two, syncarpous, inferior; ovary 

 one-chambered, with one basal ovule. Seeds non-endospermic. 



Type I.: DANDELION {Taraxacum officinale). 



Vegetative characters. — A perennial herb containing a milky 

 juice, with simple radical leaves, and a bare inflorescence-axis 

 terminating in a capitulum. The Dandelion has a tap-root 

 surmounted by a short erect rhizome. The rhizome is a 

 sympode. Each year the visible axis, which bears the radical 

 leaves at its base and terminates in an inflorescence, dies down 

 nearly to its base. A bud in the axil of one of the radical 

 leaves on this persistent basal part grows out the following year, 

 and produces a similar radical tuft of leaves and a terminal 

 inflorescence. This in turn dies down to near its base, and an 

 axillary bud on it grows up in the next year to produce a new 

 flowering axis. Thus the rhizome is made up of the per- 

 sistent bases of all these successive branches strung together 

 to form a false axis or sympode. The rhizome is pulled 



