48 NATIVE FLOWERS OF VICTORIA. 
CHAPTER VI. 
Daisies and Everlastings. 
E verybody knows these flowers well; 
they are typical flowers of the great 
and important Compositae or Composite 
family, so called because what seems to be 
a flower is really very many small flowers packed 
closely together in one composite or collected flower- 
head. These small flowers are called florets: they 
are usually insignificant, and yet, if closely examined, 
they show a perfect flower structure. Each floret is 
capable of producing seed, and that is the reason why 
we get so many seed from one “flower” of an Aster, a 
Zinnia, or a Dahlia. The florets are packed closely 
together — sometimes there are very few florets and 
sometimes a great number — and usually there is an 
ornamental coloured row of large petal-like structures 
which are not really petals, but what are called 
bracts or ray-florets. Thus what appears to be a 
single Dahlia, a single Daisy, or a single Sunflower, 
is really a head of many floAvers collected closely 
together, with the outside row of florets each having 
an enlarged structure like a petal. The “double” 
forms of these flowers have these ray-florets developed 
so that each individual flower has one, as well as the 
outside row. 
The Composite family is a very extensive one, 
which is represented in every country of the world; 
