The Chief Gardener picked up one of the apples.
"That is a pretty good calyx, Davy," he said.
Davy stopped popping corn a minute. His face was rather hot, anyway, from the glowing coals.
"Why, I thought that was the pistil," he said.
"The pistil is the core inside of it. It is the calyx of the apple-bloom that grows fleshy and makes the best part of the apple."
The Chief Gardener cut the apple in half, and showed the faint line that marked the core.
"That was the pistil," he said, "and at the end you see there are still the tips of the sepals and little traces of the stamens. The apple is one of our very finest fruits, and we ought to be glad that at least one of the Rose family has such a fine calyx. The rose itself gives us sweet flowers, but its apples would be pretty poor eating. They are called hips."
"But is the peach a calyx, too?" asked Davy. "It belongs to the same family."
A RASPBERRY IS A CLUSTER OF PISTILS WITHOUT THE CORE. A BLACKBERRY IS THE END OF A FLOWER-STEM WITH A CLUSTER OF PISTILS AROUND IT.