James Small. 
THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OP THE 
COMPOSITE. 
By James Small, M.Sc. (Lond.), Ph.C. 
Chapter V. 
THE PAPPUS. 
HE matter in the previous chapters has not been controversial 
to any marked extent. Any controversies which there have 
been, such as those on the venation of the corolla and on the 
function of the hairs on the styles, are now dead, but the question 
of the phyllome or trichome nature of the pappus is still in dispute. 
The evidence which has been previously adduced is therefore given 
in some detail in Section A and additional facts which help to 
present the matter in a new light, are brought forward in Section 
B. The whole of the fruit might have been considered in this 
chapter but as the structure of the fruit, apart from the achenial 
hairs and the pappus, seems to have little or no phyletic 1 value, 
(cp. Lavialle, Chap. I, Sect. B), it is omitted from the present 
discussion. As the question of the use of the pappus in fruit 
dispersal seems closely allied to the subject of geographical distri¬ 
bution it, also, is omitted and will be considered in a later chapter. 
A. History. 
Morison (52) was one of the first to use the presence or absence 
of the pappus as a character for the sub-division of the family ; Ray 
(57) and others followed. Vaillantus (67) distinguished three types, 
pilose, plumose and coroniform. The aculeate or aristate type was 
added by Boerhaave (7) and the squamose or paleaceous type by 
Pontedera (55), who also distinguished the “ corticose ” fruit of 
Calendula and the “ osseous ” fruit of Osteospennum. Forty years 
later Berkhey (6) gave some figures of the various types and enu¬ 
merated the coroniform, pilose, plumose, sessile and stipitate types. 
Gaertner (20) in his special study of fruits made some advance, 
distinguishing foliose, capillary, setose, plumose, spiny, penicillate 
and aristate forms. 
The details of the various types of pappus, like most other 
floral details in the Composite, were most fully developed by Cassini 
(11, 4th Mem.). Thereafter these data were applied in all taxono¬ 
mic systems. 
1 The biological or economic value may, of course, be considerable, e.g. the 
mucilaginous pericarp in many species (14), and the use of sunflower fruits as 
a source of edible fats. 
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