ORIGIN OF FLORAL ORGANS 161 
189. Beginnings of the Flower below the Seed-Plants. — 
A flower, as has just been stated (Sect. 188), is a shortened 
and modified branch. Its use is to reproduce the plant 
by the union of male and female cells (produced by the 
stamens and pistils respectively), as is explained in Sects. 
193, 194. We may properly apply the name flower to 
any portion of stem modified to bear clustered organs which 
produce cells that unite and mingle their contents to repro- 
duce the plant. 
Conelike clusters of reproductive organs are found in 
the club-mosses (Lycopodium) (Fig. 173), and the horse-tails 
or scouring-rushes (guisetum) (Fig. 174). These simple 
flowers of plants which grow from spores (Sect. 265), not 
from seeds with embryos, are much more lke the cones 
of pines and other evergreen trees than like ordinary 
flowers; for the flowers of spore-plants and the cones of 
the evergreen trees and shrubs are extremely simple in 
many ways, and agree also in their spiral arrangement and 
in having no flower leaves corresponding to sepals and 
petals. Since the general law among plants and animals 
is that the more complex forms are descended from sim- 
pler ones (Chapter XXVI), it is allowable to suppose that 
ordinary flowers are remotely descended from some such 
conelike structures as those of Figs. 178, 174. 
The development of flowers has generally been toward 
making them more showy, thus reducing waste of pdllen 
(Sect. 195 and Chapter XVII). 
190. The Anther and its Contents. — Some of the shapes 
of anthers may be learned from Figs. 108 and 119.1 Most 
anthers are thicker than the filament and two-lobed, the 
halves being joined by a connective (Fig. 108, c), which is 
1 See Kerner and Oliver's Natural History of Plants, Vol. II, pp. 86-95. 
