58 FAMILIAR TREES 
The female flowers are grouped in little egg- 
shaped, bud-like tufts, sessile on the branch, con- 
sisting of several overlapping green bracts, each of 
which bears two flowers on its inner face, the 
crimson stigmas forming a tassel at the top of 
the cluster. The flower itself is only a two- 
chambered ovary, surrounded by a velvety cup-like 
“bracteole” (which afterwards grows into the large 
leafy husk or “cupule” of the nut), and is sur- 
mounted by a short style and two of the long, 
crimson, tongue-like stigmas. 
Concerning the nut, the Rev. H. N. Ellacombe 
writes :— 
“There is a peculiarity in the growth of the nut that is worth 
the notice of the botanical student. The male blossoms or catkins 
(also anciently called ‘agglettes’ or ‘blowinges’) are mostly pro- 
duced at the ends of the year’s shoots, while the pretty little 
crimson female blossoms are produced close to the branch; they are 
completely sessile or unstalked. Now, in most fruit trees, when a 
flower is fertilised the fruit is produced exactly in the same place, 
with respect to the main tree, that the flower occupied ; a peach or 
apricot, for instance, rests upon the branch which bore the flower. 
But in the nut a different arrangement prevails. As soon as the 
flower is fertilised it starts away from the parent branch; a fresh 
branch is produced, bearing leaves and the nut or nuts at the 
end, so that the nut is produced several inches away from the 
spot on which the flower originally was. I know of no other 
tree that produces its fruit in this way, nor do I know what 
special benefit to the plant arises from this arrangement.” 
Towards the solution of this problem it may be 
suggested that as it produces no petals the shrub 
has energy to form abundant pollen, some of which 
will certainly be wind-wafted on to the spreading 
stigmas if there are no leaves in the way. Hence 
