16 INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY 
chaff) and an ovule with an elongated style (called sik in 
corn), which grows attached to the ovule’s tip. The tip of 
the style, or silk, is the stigma, which is the roughened, 
sticky surface to which pollen grains may adhere when they 
fall upon it. 
13. The seed. Irom a pollen grain which has fallen on the 
stigma there grows downward through the style a very small 
Fig. 11. Two branches from the tassel bearing staminate flowers 
tube (the pollen tube), which finally reaches the interior of the 
ovule, where there is a very small egg. This egg is fertilized 
by its union with a smaller body carried by the pollen tube, 
and from the result of this fertilization a new embryo corn 
plant develops within the ovule. While still within the de- 
veloping ovule, or seed, this young plant produces its root 
tip and stem tip; in corn and other erass seeds there is a 
special structure (scutellum) by means of which the embryo 
