FRUITS AND SEEDS 



'5o 



forming a collective mass. These fruits are there- 

 fore spurious in the sense explained above, and as 

 each of them is not the product of a single flower, 

 but of many flowers or of an inflorescence, they are 

 also known as collective fruits. In the Jack-fruit, 

 for instance, when the skin and the edible parts are 

 removed, a long, 

 fleshy, more or less 

 cylindrical stalk is 

 exposed, which is 

 nothing more than 

 the axis or rachis of 

 the spike or spadix 

 which matures into 

 the fruit. Every con- 

 ical bit on the skin of 

 the fruit represents a 

 single flower of the 

 inflorescence, from 

 the conglomeration 

 of which the fruit 

 has been formed. 

 Such a succulent 

 collective fruit is 

 kriown as a soROSis. 

 The fruit of toont or 



Mulberry is also a sorosis. The fruit of aswathwa, 

 hot, and dumur consists of an excavated jug-shaped 

 axis or rachis of an inflorescence within which are in- 

 serted the minute fruits which are popularly mistaken 

 for seeds. Such a fruit hais been named a syconus. 

 The structure of the latter fruits agrees closely with 

 that of the hip of the Rose, but there is this essential 

 difference between them: the former are the products 

 of many flowers and the latter of only a single flower,' 



c, Cone. 



Figr. 136. — Pinus 



ca, Carpellary leaf witll two seeds. 

 5, Wing^ed seed removed. 



