50 AUSTRALIAN BOTANY. 



the seed or matured ovule or ovules contained in the peri- 

 carp. In point of fact, the fruit is the ovary arrived at its 

 mature stage. The word fruit is often misunderstood ; 

 thus a pine cone is as much a fruit as a peach, orange, 

 or apple. 



Fruits are of many shapes, sizes, and substances. They 

 may be flat, globular, angular, cylindrical, conical, etc. 

 They are either smooth, rough, prickly, or warty. They 

 are divided into two classes, dehiscent {opening or discharging 

 seeds) and indehiscent {not opening). Dehiscent fruits are 

 those which discharge their seeds by the bursting of the 

 pericarp. The separating parts of such seed-coverings are 

 termed valves, as in the shells of a pea, which is a dehis- 

 cent fruit. Indehiscent fruits, such as the apple, cherry, 

 and loquat, set their seeds free by the decay of the fleshy 

 matter surrounding them ; fruit-eating birds often free this 

 kind of seed. Fruits have one or more cells. The pea, 

 for instance, has several seeds in one compartment. It is 

 therefore unilocular or one-celled. An apple has five cells, 

 each containing a seed ; it is therefore multilocular or many- 

 celled. 1 



All fruits are either simple {apocarpous) or compound 

 {syncarpous). 



Apocarpous?- — Having the carpels 3 quite distinct from 

 each other, one series only formed from each flower. 



1 In descriptive botany a fruit is always supposed to result from a 

 single flower, unless the contrary be stated. It may, like the pistil, be 

 syncarpous or apocarpous ; and as in many cases carpels united in the 

 flower may become separate as they ripen, an apocarpous fruit may 

 result from a syncarpous pistil. — Bentham. 



2 Apocarpous {disunited). 



s Carpel ox carpidium, literally a fruit. 



