154 
ORGANOGRAPHY. 
BOOK I. 
72 73 
When the receptacle is not fleshy, but is surrounded by an 
involucre, it has been called the clinanthium (the thalamus of 
Tournefort, as in Compositae, or, in the language of Richard, 
phoranthium : Lessing calls this part the rachis. But if the 
receptacle is fleshy, and is not enclosed within an involucmm, 
as in Dorstenia and Ficus {fig. 73.), it is then called by Link 
hjpanthodium ; the same writer formerly named it amplian- 
thium, a term now abandoned. With receptacles of this sort, 
which are depressed and distended branches, are not unfre- 
quently confounded parts of a different nature, as in the 
Strawberry, the soft, succulent centre of which {fig. 74.) is 
evidently the growing point, excessively enlarged, and bearing 
the carpels upon its surface. See Disk, further on. 
According to the different modes in which the inflorescence 
is arranged, it has received different names, the right appli- 
cation of which is of the first importance in descriptive botany. 
If flowers are sessile along a common axis, as in Plantago, the 
inflorescence is called a spike {fig. 76.) ; if they are pedicel- 
late, under the same circumstances, they form a raceme, 
{fig. 77.), as in the Hyacinth : the raceme and the spike 
differ, therefore, in nothing, except that the flowers of the 
latter are sessile, of the former pedicellate. These are the 
true characters of the raceme and spike, which have been 
confused and misunderstood. 
