212 PRACTICAL COURSE IN BOTANY 
you see the ovule? Where is it attached? (Use a mature 
akene for this purpose.) In most plants of this family, the 
akene is surmounted by delicate hairy bristles, as in the 
dandelion, wild lettuce, and groundsel; or by small chaffy 
scales, as in the sneezeweed and sunflower, and sometimes 
by hooks and barbed hairs, like those of the tickseed, bur 
marigold, and cocklebur. These appendages constitute the 
pappus. They are modifications 
of the sepals, and serve an impor- 
tant purpose in aiding the dis- 
tribution of the seed. Can you 
310 311 312 313 
Figs. 309-314. — Akenes of the composite family: 309, mayweed (no 
papp’s); 310, chicory (pappus a shallow cup); 311, sunflower (pappus of two 
dcciduous scales); 312, sneezeweed (Helenitum, pappus of five scales); 313, sow 
thistle (pappus of delicate downy hairs); 314, dandelion, tapering below the 
pappus into along beak. (After Gray.) 
suggest some of the ways in which they may aid in accom- 
plishing this object ? 
235. The stamens and pistil.— Remove the corolla of a 
disk flower carefully so as not to disturb the inclosed organs, 
and notice how the stamens are united into a tube by their 
anthers. Flatten out the tube and make an enlarged sketch 
of it, showing the long, narrow shape of the anthers and their 
mode of attachment. Can you make out how they open to 
discharge their pollen? Examine one of the younger florets 
near the center of the disk, and observe that the tip of the 
style is inclosed in the anther tube with the lobes of the 
stigma pressed tightly together by their inner faces (Fig. 315), 
so that it is impossible for any of the pollen to reach the stig- 
