March, 1902 .] Use of Some Common Botanical Terms. 
217 
are altogether misleading. The typical flower is made up of four 
sets of floral organs, as follows : 
. . . ( 1. Gvnoecium — composed of carpels. 
r prti le nnrts *' x A 
( 2. Androecium — composed of stamens. 
vSterile parts . . 
( 3. Corolla — composed of petals. 
{ 4. Calyx — composed of sepals. 
Gvnoecium and androecium should simply mean the house or 
place in which the male and female plants live and thus the mis- 
take will be avoided of implying sexuality to the carpels and 
stamens. The term sterile should never be applied to a staminate 
flower. It is manifestly absurd to continue to call a staminate 
flower sterile when it produces a large number of microspores. 
A sterile flower is one which has lost the power of spore repro- 
duction. The term pistil is very misleading and should not be 
used except for a gynoecium in which the carpels are completely 
united. It would be better to not use it at all. The parts of any 
cycle or whorl of the flower may be free or partly united or com- 
pletely united and these conditions can be easily indicated without 
a special terminology. The older terms in regard to the sym- 
metry of the flower should be completely dropped and the newer 
ones, which accord with mathematical conceptions, be used. 
According to Barnes, stigma, style, and ovulary are the usual 
parts of a carpel. Ovary should only be used for an egg-produc- 
ing organ of the gametophyte. If the carpels are free the ovular- 
ies are simple ; but for convenience, if the ovularies of a number 
of carpels are united the entire structure may be called a com- 
pound ovulary with so many loculi or cavities. The term cell is 
to be used only in its cytological sense as the unit of plant struc- 
ture. To speak of the cells of the ovulary or of the stamen when 
the loculi are meant is misleading. 
The ovule is originally the megasporangium and produces one 
or more megaspores. The microsporangia are borne on the stamens 
and produce the microspores. The pollen grain and the embryo- 
sac are the male and female plants of the gametophyte generation 
of the seed plants, and develop from the microspore and mega- 
spore, respectively. A distinction must be made between the 
microspore, which is a single cell, and the pollengrain, a several- 
celled male gametophyte ; also between the megaspore, a single 
cell, and embryo-sac, the female gametophyte. The pollentube 
is not the male gametophyte, but only a part of that individual. 
The entire structure, which develops from the microspore, is the 
male gametophyte. The pollengrains should not be called pol- 
lenspores, nor should the embryo-sac be called a megaspore. 
Endosperm should be restricted to the Angiosperms and stand for 
the tissue or cells which come from the definitive cell, and in such 
