STRUCTURE OF THE PLANT 



17 



inner delicate parts of the flower. This organ is called 

 a sepal, and the whole whorl of such leaves the calyx. 

 Thus a sepal is nothing but a modified leaf. In many 

 cases this fact is obvious — as, for instance, in the sepal of 

 the rose, which keeps its thin lamina. Very few flowers 

 give us the same opportunity as the peony of following 

 this gradual transformation. 



The sepals in a flower, are followed by a number of 

 leaves coloured white or some other bright shade with a 

 satin or velvet surface, so vainly imitated in artificial 

 flowers ; these are petals, forming together 

 the corolla. This seems a great leap ; the 

 sepal and the petal of a rose have no 



Fig. 7. 



Fig. 8. 



similarity. But let us put aside the rose and pass to 

 other flowers. Even in the peony some connection 

 between a sepal and a petal can be traced in the red 

 border of the former and in the notch of the upper part 

 of the latter (fig. 8), which is similar to that in the 

 sepal (fig. 7, right hand). In the Camellia, however, we 



