1/8 



Elementary Botany 



AMENTACE^. 



Typical plant, Common Hazel {Corylus Avellana, fig. 162). 



Note, the plant is a shrub or small tree (trees and shrubs 

 are met with in the order) ; leaves alternate ; flowers in 

 catkins, monoecious (in many plants of the order, as the 

 Willow, the flowers are dioecious) ; staminate catkins pendulous ; 

 numerous wedge-shaped bracts ; no perianth ; eight stamens 

 attached to each bract, fig. 312 (in the order the number of 

 stamens present varies from two upwards, and a slight perianth 

 is sometimes present) ; pistillate inflorescence a bud-like catkin 



Fig. 312.— The Hazel (Cwyfej^w^/aMa). I. Male flower. II. Female flower. 

 ■III. Fruit with laciniated spurious cupule. 



with two flowers within surrounded by numerous bracts, each 

 flower consisting of a two-celled ovary with two red stigmas (in 

 the order the pistillate catkins are either pendulous like the 

 staminate, with one, two, or three flowers on each scale-like 

 bract, or in a bud-like head with two or three flowers in the 

 centre) ; fruit a one-seeded nut (in some plants of the order a 

 capsule). This is an important and extensive family, distributed 

 all over the globe, especially in temperate regions, and yields a 

 large number of timber trees as well as esculent plants. 



It is divided into several sub-orders, four of which are 

 represented in this country, viz. \-^ 



