82 
HOW PLANTS ARE PROPAGATED. 
248. Multiple Fruits are masses of simple or accessory fruits belonging to differ, 
ent flowers, all compacted together. Mulberries (Fig. 223) are of this sort. They 
look like blackberries, but each grain belongs to a separate 
flower ; and the eatable pulp is not even the seed-vessel of that, 
but is a loose calyx grown pulpy, just like that of Checker- 
berry, and surrounding an akene, which is generally taken for a 
seed. The pine-apple is much like a mulberry on a large scale. 
A fig is a multiple fruit, being a hollow flower-stalk grown pulpy, 
the inside lined by a great number of minute flowers. 
249. So, under the name of fruit very different things are 
eaten. In figs it is a hollow flower-stalk ; in pine-apples and 
mulberries, clusters of flower-leaves, as 
well as the stalk they cover ; in straw- 
berries, the receptacle of a flower; in blackberries, the 
same, though smaller, and a cluster of little stone-fruits 
that cover it; in raspberries, the little stone-fruits in a 
cluster, without the receptacle. In checkerberries, quinces, 
and (as to all but the core) apples and pears, we eat a 
fleshy enlarged calyx ; in peaches and other stone-fruits, 
the outer part of a seed-vessel ; in grapes, gooseberries, 
blueberries, and cranberries, the whole 
seed-vessel, grown rich and pulpy. 
250. The Cone of Pine (Fig. 224) and 
the like is a sort of multiple fruit. Each 
scale is a whole pistillate flower, con- 
sisting of an open pistil leaf, ripened, and 
bearing on its upper face one or two naked seeds, — as explained at the end of the last 
section (218, 219). Fig. 225 shows the upper side of one of the thick scales taken 
off, bearing one seed ; the other, removed, is shown, with its wing, in Fig. 226. 
224 
Pitch-pine Cone 
§ 2. Seeds. 
252. A Seed is an ovule fertilized and matured, and with a germ or embryo 
formed in it. 
253. In the account of the growth of plants from the seed, at the beginning of 
the book (Chapter I. Section I.), seeds have already been considered sufficiently 
