220 COMPOSITE FAMILY. 



LXI. C0MP0SIT2E, COMPOSITE FAMILY. 



Herbs, or a very few shrubs, known at once by the " com- 

 pound flower," as it was termed by the older botanists, this 

 consisting of several or many flowers in a head, surrounded 

 by a set of bracts (formerly likened to a calyx) forming an 

 involucre, the stamens as many as the lobes of the corolla 

 (almost always 5) and inserted on its tube, their anthers 

 syngenesious, i.e. united in a ring or tube through which the 

 style passes. (Lessons, Figs. 290, 291.) Calyx with its tube 

 incorporated with the surface of the ovary, its limb or border 

 (named the pappus) consisting of bristles, either rigid or 

 downy, or of teeth, awns, scales, etc., or of a cup or crown, or 

 often none at all. (Lessons, Figs. 379-384.) Corollas either 

 tubular or funnel-form and lobed, or strap-shaped (ligulate), 

 or sometimes both sorts in the same head, when the outermost 

 or marginal row has the strap-shaped corollas, forming rays 

 (which answered to the corolla of the supposed compound 

 flower), the separate flowers therefore called ray flowers; those 

 of the rest of the head, or disk, called disk flowers. The 

 dilated end of the stalk or branch upon which the flowers are 

 borne is called the receptacle. The bracts, if there are any, 

 on the receptacle (one behind each flower) are called the chaff 

 of the receptacle. The bracts or leaves of the involucre out- 

 side the flowers are commonly called scales. Style 2-cleft at 

 the apex. Ovary 1-celled, containing a single ovule, erect from 

 its base, in fruit becoming an akene. Seed filled by the embryo 

 alone. (For the flowers, and the particular terms used in 

 describing them, see Lessons, pp. 93, 94, Figs. 266-269 ; for the 

 fruit, see p. 121, Figs. 379-384.) 



The largest family of Flowering Plants, generally too diffi- 

 cult for the beginner ; but most of the common kinds, both 

 wild and cultivated, are here briefly sketched. For fuller 

 details as to the wild ones, with all the species, the student ' 

 will consult the Manual, and Chapman's Southern Flora. The 

 following synopsis is arranged to aid the beginner, but the 

 genera are numbered in systematic sequence. 



Sekies I. Head with only the outermost flowers strap- 

 shaped, and these never perfect, i.e. they are either pistillate 



