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The Museum Gazette 



FRUITS AND SEEDS. 



The term " fruit" is applied indiscriminately by a botanist 

 to the succulent plum, the hard seed-pod of a poppy, and the 

 juicy fruit of the strawberry, but it is usually applied in every- 

 day language to those fruits alone which are fleshy and edible. 

 When a flower arrives at maturity, certain of its parts wither 

 and fall away, having fulfilled their destiny. These are 

 usually the petals, stamens and style. The part which 

 remains is the ovary. Hence we may define the fruit as a 

 ripened ovary. The calyx often remains ; it constitutes the 

 " nose " of an apple. From what has been just remarked it 

 is evident that the situation and arrangement of the fruit 

 must be the same as that of the flower which preceded it. If 

 the flower was lateral, so will be the fruit ; if sessile, the fruit 

 will be sessile, and so on. But slight modifications in position 

 sometimes occur ; we may recall the cowslip with its dropping 

 flowers and erect fruit. It may here be remarked that the 

 ovary constitutes but part of the mature perfect pistil, the 

 central organ of a flower. The pistil is bottle-shaped, the 

 style forming the neck ; the stigma, the cork, and the ovary, 

 the swollen body of the "bottle." Within the ovary are the 

 ovules, which ultimately become seeds. The " wall " of the 

 fruit enclosing the ripe seed or seeds is known as the pericarp. 

 It varies greatly in different fruits. It may be of uniform 

 structure, and either woody or succulent, as the case may be. 

 In many cases the texture undergoes considerable alterations, 

 and the terms " endocarp " and " epicarp " may be conve- 

 niently applied to the distinctive inner and outer layers. A 

 modification of special advantage to the plant is that the 

 fleshy epicarp often with a brightly coloured external " skin " 

 attracts birds, whilst the hard inner layer protects the seed 

 from them. 



We may arrange all fruits under two groups, those which 

 open and scatter their seeds, and those which do not open. 



