200 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
spreads outwards, like a large hanging lip (l), and extends at the base in the 
form of a long spur (sp). 
In the middle of the flower rises a column, which bears at the same time 
both the male and female organs, a singular disposition which we have not had 
an illustration of in any of our former lessons. On its summit is the male 
organ, which is not in the usual form of a stamen and anther, but simply 
a body of two small cells, 
which each open by a slit. 
If you introduce the point of 
a needle into one of these 
cells, you will bring out a 
small green mass composed 
of angular grains, which hold 
together by a very thin 
elastic thread; this mass at¬ 
taches itself to a very slender 
support, which is inserted, 
as well as that of the neigh¬ 
bouring cell, on a small knob 
covered with a plate, which 
is easily removed. These 
green masses are the pollen. 
When the period of fecund¬ 
ation arrives, they come out 
from their cell and hang 
downwards, the small foot 
which sustains them pre¬ 
venting them from falling. 
They remain suspended, and 
are applied against a large 
shining surface (st), which 
you see below the small knob 
that retains their foot. This 
surface is the stigma, or that 
part of the pistil intended to 
receive the pollen. These pollen-grains, becoming gummed to the humid 
sticky surface of the stigma, soon separate and dissolve, 
and fecundation is accomplished. As to the long slender 
body of the ovary (o), under the free envelopes of the 
flower, if you observe it in a flower which has been 
some time expanded, it is twisted in such a manner that 
the lip and spur, which in the early period of its de¬ 
velopment formed the upper part of the flower, are 
become the lower part. 
We come now to a very different 
organisation of flower to any we have 
hitherto met with. It is the Oak 
(Quercus pedunculata, jfo/. 5). 
In this tree you meet with, as you 
did in the Melon, flowers of different 
natures, one being staminate or fertilis¬ 
ing flowers, and the others pistillate or 
fruit-bearing. On those long cottony bunches of about an inch in length 
( fid' 6), we meet with the male or staminate flowers, arranged spirally on what 
Fig. 5.—The Oak (Quercus pedunculata). 
Fig. 7. — A male 
flower of the Oak 
magnified. 
