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 hear 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. 213), and the horse-tails 

 or scouring-rushes (Uquisetum) (Fig. 211). These simple 

 flowers of plants which grow from spores (Sect. 265), not 

 from seeds with embryos, are much more like 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. 211, 213. 



The development of flowers has generally been toward 

 making them more showy, thus reducing waste of pollen 

 (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.^ 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 Xatural History of Plants, Vol. II, pp. 86-95. 



