176 LESSONS WITS PLANTS 



a short, narrow neck (e, Fig. 170), when the plant 

 is in flower; but at seed-time this neck has 

 grown an inch long (Fig. 171), the anthers, styles 

 and corolla have perished, the pappus has grown 

 into a spreading parachute, and the ovary has 

 elongated into a hard, seed-like body. Each one 

 of us has blown the tiny balloons from the white 

 receptacle, and has watched them float away to 

 settle point downwards in the cool grass; but per- 

 haps we had not always associated these balloon 

 voyages with the planting of the dandelion. 



200. The dandelion, then, has many curious 

 habits. It belongs to the great class of composi- 

 tous (or compound) flowers, which, with various 

 forms, comprises about one -tenth of all the flow- 

 ering plants of the earth. The structure of these 

 plants is so peculiar that a few technical terms 

 must be used to describe them. The entire 

 "flower" is really a head, composed of florets, and 

 surrounded by an involucre. These florets are borne 

 upon a so-called receptacle. The plume -like down 

 upon the seeds is the pappus. The anthers are 

 said to be syngenesious ("in a ring"), because 

 united in a tube about the style; and this struc- 

 ture is the most characteristic feature of composi- 

 tous flowers, — more designative of them, in fact, 

 than the involucrate head, for in some other kinds 

 of plants the flowers are in such heads, and in 



