210 WILD FLOWER FAMILIES 
the winter and sending up in spring the woolly 
stems which bear upon their tips the inconspicu- 
ous white blossoms. A. glance at these shows 
that they belong to the Composite family, in which 
many tiny flowers are crowded together in a 
single head, each stem bearing about five of these 
heads. A little further study shows also that the 
pollen-bearing and the seed-bearing flowers are 
upon quite distinct plants. The bracts around the 
base of each flower head are densely woolly like 
the stems, and the flower heads themselves are 
made dense by the erect pappus arising from each 
floret. By cutting a vertical section of the pistil- 
late blossom you can easily see, through the lens, 
the little undeveloped achenes resting on the 
receptacle, each bearing the many slender vertical 
white hairs that make up the pappus, and the long 
style which projects beyond the pappus and holds 
the two-lobed stigma well away from them, so 
that when the pollen-laden insects come to the 
flowers the stigmas rather than the pappus receive 
the pollen grains. : 
The pollen-bearing flowers are borne in shorter, 
broader heads than the seed-bearing ones. The 
reddish or brownish anther tubes project beyond 
the general whiteness of the head and are tipped 
with the yellow pollen, so that these blossoms are 
comparatively conspicuous. Their stems, how- 
ever, are shorter than those of the others by sev- 
