FRUITS 267 
304. Collective, or multiple, fruits. — The pineapple is an 
example of both an accessory and a multiple fruit, being 
composed of the 
ripened ovaries of 
a number of sep- 
arate flowers that 
have become 
more or less co- 
herent. The osage 
orange, sweet 
gum balls, fig, and 
mulberry are 
other examples 
of this class. é oe 
Serr 
305. Dissection \ SS 
= 
mp ; 
[y 
of a multiple fruit. 
— Get one of the 
dried figs sold by au | 
the grocers. Look 402 403 
at the small end Fics. 402-404. Multiple fruit of the pineapple: 
where the skin 402, external view of a ripe fruit, showing the prolonged 
Ceo ‘ receptacle growing into a new plant above, and the scaly 
originates; of what bracted covering below ; 403, vertical section through the 
part is it a modi- axis of a fruit, showing a, the receptacle, with b, b, the 
é 9 fleshy ovaries cohering around it and forming the edible 
fication ? (2 8 9.) part of the fruit ; 404, asingle ‘“‘eye’’ or scale, somewhat 
Can you think of reduced, showing the scaly bract from the axil of which 
the (generally) abortive flower originates. 
a reason for this 
curious, urnlike enlargement of the receptacle? Is there any- 
thing about the fig, for instance, that renders it peculiarly 
liable to be preyed upon by birds and insects? Could any 
but a very small insect get through the eye without in- 
juring the fruit? Could it free itself from the sticky mass 
inside and get out again without difficulty? Would- you 
judge from this that the caprification of the fig is easily 
effected (279), even when the fig wasp is present? Can you 
now account for the fact that over four hundred varieties of 
cultivated figs ripen their fruit without fertilization? 
