860 PRINCIPLES OF BOTANY, ETC. 
§ 335. 
Flos plenus. A full flower is that where the petals 
have become so numerous as to have excluded both 
stamens and style altogether. As such flowers want 
the necessary organs for impregnation, they will 
never be able to produce seeds. A full and double 
flower originates from too great richness of soil only. 
Numbers of vessels become stuffed, as it were, with 
nourishing sap, in a manner that the petals and sta- 
mens split and become divided into more petals. Some 
flowers are so full that the calyx bursts. 
Monopetalous flowers are rarely full, such as Pri- 
mula; Hyacinthus; Datura; Polyanthes. 
Polypetalous plants are oftener full, as Pyrus ; 
Prunus; Rosa; Fragaria; Ranunculus; Caltha ; 
Anemone ; Aquilegia ; 5 Papaver or Paeonia, and 
many others*. 
§ 336. 
Flowers which have nectaries in form of a spur or 
a cup, usually increase the number of the spur or 
cup alone, and lose the petals altogether, or they 
retain the last in their natural situation. Or they 
lose sometimes the spur or the a and enlarge 
only the petals. 
* Dianthus Caryophyllus and Papaver . somniferum have 
been brought forward as fair instances to prove, that full 
flowers may produce seeds. But this is a mistake, a full 
flower having been ‘taken for a double one. The last may 
bear seeds, but a full flower is totally incapable of it. , 
Of 
