The Daisy's Pedigree. 15 



petals, which alone are what we generally have in our 

 minds when we think of flowers, are comparatively 

 useless and inessential organs : a vast number of 

 flowers have not got them at all, and, in those which 

 have got them, their purpose is merely subsidiary and 

 supplementary to that of the little central spikes and 

 knobs. For the small yellow rosette consists of the 

 stamens and pistils— the ' essential floral organs,' as 



Fig. 4. — Longitudinal section of Common Buttercup. 



botanists call them. A flower may be complete with 

 only a single stamen or a single pistil, apart from any 

 petals or other bright and conspicuous surroundings ; 

 and some of the simplest flowers do actually consist 

 of such separate parts alone : but without stamens 

 and pistils there can be no flower at all. The object 

 of the flower, indeed, is to produce fruit and seed, and 

 the pistil is the seed-vessel in its earliest form ; while 

 the stamen manufactures the pollen without which 



