ORGANS OF REPRODUCTION. 



37 



Scape is a term applied to special flower-stalks of some 

 rootstocks, such as the simple naked peduncle of the 

 primrose and cowslip; it is common to bulb and leaf 

 corms, as also to some Palmids, examples of the first 

 being tulip and hyacinth, and of the latter, cycads and 

 grass trees ; it is also applied to branched peduncles, as 

 in Adam's-needle, and aloes. 



Culvi is a term applied to the flower- stalks of grasses. 



The inflorescence is either naked or furnished with 

 small leaf-Hke appendages called hracts, or more or less 

 surrounded or enclosed in leafy cups or sheaths, termed 

 involucre and spathes. 



By'acts are seated immediately below the flower, on 

 or at the base of the pedicel or peduncle ; they are often 

 small and scale-like, in some flower spikes they are broad, 

 closely overlapping one another like tiles on a roof, 

 imbricate, in the form of a cone, as in many of the 

 Acanthus family. 



Involucrce are either small leaflets in whorls seated 

 below each flower, as in the Mallow family, or below the 

 common axis of the pedicels of umbels ; in the Virginian 

 spider-wort, and others of the same family, it is in two 

 pieces, like a bivalved shell, enclosing many flowers, and 

 in the Marvel of Peru it is in the form of a leafy cup 

 (fig. I, h) ; in the Composite family it consists of nume- 

 rous imbricated scales, forming compact heads of nume- 

 rous small flowers, called florets; both bracts and invo- 

 lucre are often highly coloured, as in many of the Acan- 

 thus and Euphorb families. Bougainvillaea and scarlet 

 Monarda. The difference between bracts and involucre 

 is often not evident; for instance, the male spike of the 

 banana, which consists of closely imbricate bracts, their 

 base nearly surrounding the axis, each being common 



