1883.] 
AMERICAS' AGRICULTURIST. 
189 
The Doctor’s Talks. 
If you have properly observed your few seeds, 
you will have a general idea of what is taking place 
•with countless millions of seeds everywhere this 
•spring. No matter what the size of the seeds, or 
-their shape, each one has a tiny plant within it. 
Figs. 1, 2 and 3.— embryo op corn. 
That little plant is called the embryo. You have 
-seen the embryo filling the whole seed, like that of 
the bean. In the buckwheat, the slender embryo 
Is coiled up in the midst of its food, or albumen, 
while in the bean the food was contained in the 
seed-leaves of the embryo itself. When seeds are 
coming up in the field or garden this spring, I hope 
you will examine many more, and see how the same 
general plan is varied. You will observe that the 
radicle always pushes one end down into the 
earth, and the other end raises the plumule up 
above the surface. You were shown that the bean 
and the buckwheat had two seed-leaves, and the 
corn but one seed-leaf to the embryo, and it was 
stated that the terms 
Monocotyledonous and Dicotyledonous 
were used for plants with one seed-leaf and with 
two seed-leaves to their embryos. I have run over 
these points again, as I wish you to be sure and 
have them well in your mind. While you had no 
difficulty with your dicotyledonous embryos, I am 
afraid yon did not make out the monocotyledonous 
embryo so easily. Corn has a large embryo, and I 
wish you to work at that until you understand it. 
If you have corn that has been in the soil, or has 
been soaked and kept moist and warm until it be¬ 
gins to germinate, you can, by careful work, get 
out the embryo. Figure 1 is a kernel of corn 
showing the fiat side; the central portion is the 
«embryo, or “chit,” as it is often called. All the 
Figs. 4, 5 and 6 .— germinating wheat. 
Test of the grain is albumen. Figure 2 shows the 
corn cut through the middle, and presents the side 
of the embryo. If you carefully pick at the em¬ 
bryo of a softened grain, with the point of a small 
knife, or with a stout needle, you can take out the 
embryo, fig. 3. At the lower part is the radicle ; 
the thick portion is the cotyledon, which is wrapped 
around the radicle; above is the plumule. You 
see from this that 
Corn is a Monocotyledonous Plant. 
Now take a look at your grains of wheat. If you 
have none that have 
been softened by plant¬ 
ing, soak a few grains 
in hot water until soft 
enough to cut. By tak¬ 
ing off a slice with a 
sharp knife, you will 
see the embryo in a lit¬ 
tle hollow place at the 
bottom of the albumen, 
as in fig. 4; cis the rad¬ 
icle and d the plumule; 
the cotyledon is curved 
around them and is cut 
through, the white por¬ 
tion above, 6 , being its 
cut edge. The dotted 
portion above is the 
albumen. If you watch 
the wheat grains, you 
will see that several 
roots will be formed 7 
and push downward, as 
in fig. 5, and later, as in fig. 6 . The plumule will 
extend upward, and the cotyledon remains within 
Fig. 8 .— NETTED-VEINED LEAF. 
the cavity. You will notice that the leaves of corn 
(see fig. 4, last month) have the veins all running 
lengthwise and parallel with one another. You 
will find that the leaves 
of wheat show the same. 
Such leaves are 
Called Parallel-veined. 
Now look at your bean 
leaves, which by this time 
are no doubt large enough 
(see also fig. 3, in Feb¬ 
ruary). You will see that 
the veins branch off from 
the central vein, or rib, as 
it is called, and they keep 
on dividing into finer and 
finer veins, and these 
smaller ones come together 
in such a manner as to 
cover the whole surface of 
the leaves with a fine net¬ 
work. Such leaves are 
Called Netted-vcined. 
It is an important thing to 
remember that parallel- 
veined leaves belong to 
plants with one seed-leaf 
to the embryo, or monocotyledonous plants, while 
netted-leaves belong to plants with embryos of 
two seed-leaves or dicotyledonous plants. 
In fig. 7 you have a leaf of Lily of the Valley, 
and you at once know that the embryo of its seed 
is monocotyledonous. Look at the leaf of the 
quince, in fig. 8 ; the net-like veining shows that 
the seed is dicotyledonous. The difference of the 
leaves is not the only one that accompanies the 
difference in the embryo, as we shall see further on. 
The Largest Flower. 
Harry T. W. wishes “ The Doctor ” would tell 
him if there is any larger flower than the Sun¬ 
flower. It might surprise my young friend to be 
told that the Sunflower is not a large flower. The 
great affair, sometimes as large as a dinner plate, 
with a dark center, and all around it a row of yel¬ 
low rays, like the old pictures of the sun, is a large 
cluster of very small flowers. If you will examine 
one next summer, you will see that the dark, cen¬ 
tral portion is filled with little flowers, each with its 
corolla, and bearing a fruit at the bottom which 
we call a seed. The rays are flowers of another 
shape and color, but bear no seed. All these little 
flowers are attached to a broad pithy disk. If you 
wish to see the largest flower in the world, so far 
as known, you must go to the Island of Sumatra; 
but as you can not readily do that, you must be 
content with the picture. This gives you one of 
the flowers open, and another still in the bud, 
which looks like a monster cabbage. This flower 
was named in honor of the wife of Sir Stamford 
Raffles, who, when it was discovered, was Governor 
of that part of the world, and is called Jiafflesia. 
If it has any common name, I never heard of It. 
This flower is in color a light orange, mottled with 
yellowish-white. It measures three feet across, 
and weighs about 15 pounds. “ It must be beauti¬ 
ful,” you will say. Perhaps so, if you stand at a 
distance and to the windward, otherwise you might 
get a whiff of its perfume, which is that of decay¬ 
ing meat, a foul odor that attracts swarms of flies. 
“Why is this?” you will wonder. 1 think that 
you know enough about flowers to understand that 
the part of a flower called pistil ripens to become 
the fruit or seed-pod, but only after it has been 
touched by the very fine dust called pollen, which 
is given off by other parts of the flower called sta¬ 
mens. When you smell of a lily, you are apt to 
get some of the pollen on your face. In the lily 
the stamens and pistils are in the same flower, but 
I in this monster flower they are separate—some 
flowers have pistils, and others have stamens only. 
The pollen can not reach the pistils unless it is car¬ 
ried to them, and this service is done by the in¬ 
sects. These get dusted with the pollen in one 
flower, and when they are attracted to a flower 
with pistils, they are quite sure, as they go buz¬ 
zing about to find the meat, to rub off some of the 
pollen that is on their bodies upon the pistils. 
“Where are the leaves?” do you ask? It has 
THE LARGEST FLOWER. 
none. The flower, with a sort of neck below it, Is 
the whole plant. It is a parasite, a plant that lives 
upon another plant; in this case a kind of grape 
vine, not shown in the engraving. As it steals its 
food from that vine, it has no need of stem and 
