164 Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



and exterior, with one interior petal crowded closely 



against the axis, thus — 



O 



a 



a a 



Here, then, the two external petals will be saved, 

 exactly as the one external sepal was saved in the 

 case of the calyx ; and these two petals are repre- 

 sented by the very small white lodicules under the 

 outer pale in our existing wheats and grasses. On the 

 other hand, the inner petal, jammed in between the 

 grain and the inner pale (with the stem at its back), 

 has been utterly crushed out of existence, partly 

 because of its very small size, partly because of its 

 functional uselessness, and partly because it had no 

 other part with which to coalesce, and so to save itself 

 as the inner sepals had managed to do. Moreover, it 

 must be remembered that the sepals do still perform 

 a useful service in protecting the young flower before 

 it opens, anS in keeping out noxious insects during 

 the kerning or swelling of the grain ; whereas the 

 lodicules or rudimentary petals are now apparently 

 quite functionless ; and so we may congratulate our- 

 selves that they are there at all, to preserve for us 

 the true ground-plan of the floral architecture in 

 grasses. Indeed, they have not survived by any 

 means in all grasses : among the smaller and more 



