Xxii OUTLINES OF BOTANY. 
this arrangement as well as their usual shape that has suggested the name 
of scales, borrowed from the scales of a fish. Imbricated seales, bracts, or 
leaves, are said to be squarrose, when their tips are pointed, and very spread- 
ing or recurved. 
59. Sometimes, however, most or all the leaves of the plant are reduced 
to small scales, in which case they do not appear to perform any particular 
function. The name of scales is also given to any small broad scale-like 
appendages or reduced organs, whether in the flower or any other part of 
the plant. a: 
60. Bracts (Bractee) are the upper leaves of a plant in flower (either 
all those of the flowering branches, or only one or two immediately under 
the flower), when different from the stem-leaves in size, shape, colour, or 
arrangement. They are generally much smaller and more sessile. They 
often partake of the colour of the flower, although they very frequently 
also retain the green colour of the leaves. When small they are often called 
scales. 
61. Floral leaves or leafy bracts are generally the lower bracts or the 
upper leaves at the base of the flowering branches, intermediate in size, 
shape, or arrangement, between the stem-leaves and the upper bracts. 
62. Bracteoles are the one or two last bracts under each flower, when 
they differ materially in size, shape, or arrangement from the other bracts. 
63. Stipules are leaf-like or scale-like appendages at the base of the 
leaf-stalk, or on the node of the stem. When present there are generally 
two, one on each side of the leaf, and they sometimes appear to protect the 
young leaf before it is developed. They are, however, exceedingly variable 
in size and appearance, sometimes exactly like the true leaves except that 
they have no buds in their axils, or looking like the leafiets of a compound 
leaf, sometimes apparently the only leaves of the plant; generally small 
and narrow, sometimes reduced to minute scales, spots, or scars, Sometimes 
united into one opposite the leaf, or more or less united with, or adnate to 
the petiole, or quite detached from the leaf, and forming a ring or sheath 
round the stem in the axil of the leaf. In a great number of plants they 
are entirely wanting. | 
64. Stipelle, or secondary stipules, are similar organs, sometimes found 
on compound leaves at the points where the leaflets are inserted. 
65. When scales, bracts, or stipules, or almost any part of the plant be- 
sides leaves and flowers, are stalked, they are said to be stipitate, from stipes, 
a stalk. 
§ 7. Inflorescence and its Bracts. 
66. The Emflorescence of a plant is the arrangement of the flowering 
branches, and of the flowers upon them. An Inflorescence is a flowering 
branch, or the flowering summit of a plant above the last stem-leaves, with 
its branches, bracts, and flowers. 
67. A single flower, or aninflorescence, is terminal when at the summit 
of a stem or leafy branch, axillary when in the axil of a stem-leaf, leaf- 
opposed when opposite to a stem-leaf. -The inflorescence of a plant is said 
to be terminal or determinate when the main stem and principal branches 
end in a flower or inflorescence (not in a leaf-bud), axillary or indeterminate 
when all the flowers or inflorescences are axillary, the stem or branches 
ending in leaf-buds. | 
68. A Peduncle is the stalk of a solitary flower, or of an inflorescence ; 
