Plants and their children

by Frances Theodora Parsons

“And there is a circle of flower leaves, which makes the corolla.”

Let us pull apart both calyx and corolla, and place the separate leaves as in the picture (Fig. [256]).

The five smaller leaves, the ones marked ca, are the green of the calyx.

The five larger ones, marked co, belong to the corolla. These, you notice, are not all alike. The upper one is much the largest.

Fig. 256

The two side ones are alike.

In the real flower the two lower ones are joined so as to form a little pocket.

And what else do you find?

Now, if you do not pull apart the pea blossom, you find nothing else. But you know that the seed-holding fruit is the object of the flower’s life, and that so this flower is pretty sure to have somewhere either a pistil with its seedbox, or stamens with their dust boxes, or both; for without the seeds of the seedbox, and the pollen of the dust boxes, no fruit can result.