136 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 
costly roses which droop in florist’s windows are 
brought to an artificial state by arduous culture, 
and held in it by eternal vigilance. They are 
propogated mainly by cuttings. Left to them- 
selves for a while their blossoms would dwindle 
and their pollen would intermix, till, in the course 
of time, the rose-garden would be filled with a 
generation of seedlings, showing what naturalists 
call ‘‘reversion to type.’’ Jacqueminots, American 
Beauties, Bonsilenes and Catharine Mermels would 
be sought there in vain. In their stead we should 
find blossoms resembling some more, some less 
closely, the ancestral wild roses from which all 
sprang. 
It is from the wild-rose, queen not yet come to 
her own (Fig. 29), that we shall best study the 
differences between the flowers of dicotyledons 
and those of monocotyledons. 
The wild rose has five sepals and five petals. 
Its stamens are innumerable and the cells of the 
rose-hip are partially or entirely fused together. 
But the number five is more closely adhered to by 
other members of the rose tribe. The apple- 
blossom, for instance, has five sepals and five 
petals, and apple-seeds are stored in five horny 
pockets. The geranium tribe, the mallows, the 
